Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 717
In the studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on
Go slowly. Success is a kind of energy field. You vibrate in it like a charged particle. There are new demands on your tine and talents, new interview requests and business questions, new possibilities and opportunities. In this context, when you have a free half-hour you may continue spinning like a top. Walk, breathe, stretch, meditate. Do the mundane: scrape a carrot, sweep the patio. Calm down.
Manage your money. You may or may not have paydays like this again. Study a book on money management. Learn your options. Think before you have a full-time personal trainer or buy Adar that corners too tightly at 100 miles an hour. Think before you find yourself in the position of needing to earn half a million a year in order to cover expenses and feed your vast retinue.
Protect your privacy. Begin to calculate how public and accessible you want to be. Learn how not to give yourself away. Be able to say “Thank you” and “I don’t have an answer for that question.” Have an interview persona and a public persona. At the same time be able to access your humanity.
Manage your anxiety. New stresses exist in your life. More is expected of you. The ante on each project rises. Success is not a magic pill that allays anxieties.
Expect setbacks. The next book you write after your bestseller may disappoint you, your publisher, or your readers. The movie you directed after your blockbuster May bomb. But even if your stock is lowered in the eyes of the world, it need not sink in your own eyes. Virtually no artist experiences one success after another. Determine to come back. If doors have closed to you, consult your business adviser. Plan and analyze ways to reopen them. Demonstrate your courage all over again.
Remain human. Guard your privacy and your person; decline to become a stereotype or a frozen icon. Be more than the bad-boy rock singer, the sex goddess, the reclusive dancer, the brilliant violin virtuoso. Remember that you have a heart and mind as well as a reputation.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: An Expanded Workbook Edition of Staying Sane in the Arts
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Q: You read books on Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers. How has philosophy and your personal experience shaped the latest series, Bolivianos? (Question from Vedica Art Studios and Gallery)
A: It’s difficult to pinpoint how philosophy specifically shaped my work because my curiosity spans so many subjects. Some critics have described me as a Renaissance woman, remarking on my wide-ranging and voracious reading. It’s true—I’m genuinely interested in practically everything!
In pursuit of making art, I have undertaken in-depth studies of numerous intriguing fields: drawing, color, composition, gross anatomy, art and art history, the art business, film history, photography, psychology, mythology, literature, philosophy, religion, music, jazz history, and archaeology—particularly ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya) and South America (the Inca and their ancestors).
Since the early 1990s, my inspiration and subject matter have come primarily from international travel to remote parts of the globe, especially Mexico, Central America, and South America. Travel is by far the best education! By visiting distant destinations, I have developed a deep reverence for people and cultures around the world. People everywhere are connected by our shared humanity.
These travels, supplemented by extensive research at home, are essential parts of my creative process. Research can be solitary and demanding, but I truly enjoy it. I want to know as much as possible, and this curiosity generates ideas for new work, propelling me into unexplored creative realms.
Foreign travel always expands our ways of thinking. This rich mixture of creative influences continually evolves and finds its way into my pastel paintings. Working, learning, evolving, and growing—I am perpetually curious and can hardly imagine a better way to spend my time on Earth!
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Pearls from artists* # 654
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The cynical art world, where ‘nothing is a miracle,’ benefits from disempowered artists who have been tricked into feeling devalued, and trained to live at the mercy of the marketplace. But the exact opposite is true. The art world would collapse without our coveted holy vision. Artists are born with unconventional gifts that mark them as innovative thought leaders. Society is only beginning to understand how these gifts may be employed. We possess the power to expose what is going on beneath the surface, initiate difficult conversations, and help people process an increasingly complex world. We fire bullets of truth to pierce the ever-thickening wall of relentless lies. We see things more clearly, precisely because we are on the outside. We foster empathy and point out our common humanity. We remind people that they do not have to go along with this; there are other ways to live. We have the conviction to scream at the top of our lungs when society is veering terribly off course. That the antidote to capitalism is meaning. At our best, through a rather miraculous process, artists change the world.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 642
New York City
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Radical changes in our culture threaten to undermine the potency of art and artists alike. Disparate forces conspire to lower the bar for how we expect art to function. As decades go by, we are educating and evolving to value left-brain strengths over holistic right-brain thought, with disastrous consequences for humanity… Deep contemplation has been hijacked by addictive technology. Rising authoritarianism strives to squash dissenting and diverse voices, as well as historical truths and critical thinking skills. Social media approval affects the art that is produced, shared, and validated. Easily digested work is promoted, while the most compelling work (the kind that could transform the trajectory of art, or affect real social change) is left behind. Critics are coining terms like ‘Zombie Formalism’ … and ‘Zombie Figuration’ … in response to the sterility and stultifying sameness of much contemporary work. It’s as if artists were absorbing online algorithms into their bloodstreams. This empty, safe sensibility riffs and rehashes a vacuous culture, generating a perpetual cycle of well-branded insignificance.
Kate Kretz in Art From Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice
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Pearls from artists* # 562
“Shadow,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 26” x 20,” in progress
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Jung observed that complexes could affect groups of people en masse. He saw that certain moments seemed to be expressions of a collective shadow, a bursting forth of a mass psychosis; the repressed side of a whole group coming alive; a tribal Mr. Hyde. He saw this madness first-hand in Germany in the 1930s and wrote about it. But every era carries some measure of collective shadow.
One could argue that no moment in time has seen more of the reality of human darkness than ours. Having witnessed the Holocaust and faced the threat of nuclear war in the twentieth century, and now facing the environmental impact of fossil fuels and plastics in the twenty-first century, we are undoubtedly aware of more of humanity’s potential for destruction than any of our ancestors ever were. Such a view does not come from a moralizing stance. Our era has made forced witnesses of us all.
The shadow is about where we put the Devil – where do we allow darkness to be housed? Racism and bigotry offer the relief of foisting our group’s shadow onto another whom we view as lesser. Doing so enables us not to look at or feel our shadow, and not see our own worst selves. But this collective shadow of our modern culture is also bigger and wider than group-to-group projections. There are culture-wide or civilization expressions of the collective shadow.
Jung saw the widespread loss of connection to the inner life and to a lived spirituality as one of the primary illnesses of our time. He observed that people were no longer animated by the traditional religions… For Jung, this meant that we’ve lost the old way but not yet found the new, and are sitting in a spiritual vacuum.
Into that vacuum, without our awareness, has slipped our fascination with human technology. Observe people closely today and you’ll notice that we have an almost magical faith in our devices. People see their computers and phones as all-knowing and expect them to function perfectly all the time, and view pharmaceuticals as magic cure-alls. Where we used to put God, we now have put technology. Where spirit was, we have unconsciously placed human genius.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
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Q: Would you describe your current work in a few sentences?
A: Of course, my art practice continually evolves and so does my thinking about its meaning. Using my own iPad photographs of Bolivian Carnival masks from Oruro as source material, for the past five years I have been slowly building a rogue’s gallery of beautiful, if somewhat misunderstood, characters probably best described as oddballs and misfits. For me, the paintings have a deeper meaning as archetypes of the collective unconscious. Creating this series is an act of genuine love. It is my hope that the ”Bolivianos” pastel paintings convey my deep respect and compassion for people around the world.
Comments are welcome!
Q: Foreign travel has long been a significant aspect of your work. What are your views on cultural appropriation?
A: For more than three decades my inspiration and subject matter have come mainly from international travel to remote parts of the globe. I daresay there is no better education than travel. The result is that I possess a deep love and reverence for people and cultures all over the world. We are all connected by our shared humanity.
I wholeheartedly agree with what Henry Louis Gates eloquently expressed in the NY Times Book Review of October 12, 2021. Additions are mine.
Any teacher, any student, any writer, [any artist] sufficiently attentive and motivated, must be able to engage freely with subjects of their choice. That is not only the essence of learning; it’s the essence of being human.
And
What I owe to my teachers – and to my students – is a shared sense of wonder and awe as we contemplate works of the human imagination across space and time, works created by people who don’t look like us and who, in so many cases, would be astonished that we know their work and their names. Social identities can connect us in multiple and overlapping ways; they are not protected but betrayed when we turn them into silos with sentries. The freedom to write [and make art] can thrive only if we protect the freedom to read – and to learn. And perhaps the first thing to learn, in these storm-battered days, is that we could all do with more humility, and more humanity.
Comments are welcome!
Q: How does art help you explore and understand other cultures? (Question from Arte Realizzata)
A: Art helps me explore and understand other cultures by revealing our shared humanity across space and time. For me art and travel are intertwined; there is no better education! My art-making has led me to visit fascinating places in search of source material, ideas, and inspiration: to Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, France, England, Italy, Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, and India. I have seen firsthand that people all over the world are the same.
Art has led me to undertake in-depth studies of intriguing subjects: drawing, color, composition, art, art history, the art business, film, film history, photography, mythology, literature, music, jazz, jazz history, and archaeology, particularly that of ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, and Maya), and South America (the Inca and their ancestors).
This rich mixture of creative influences continually grows. For anyone wanting to spend their time on earth studying, learning, and meeting new challenges, there is hardly anything more fascinating than to be a well-travelled, perpetually curious artist!
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you see art as a way to document the history and the customs and cultures of people? (Question from “Arte Realizzata”)
A: Certainly, art from the past gives us clues about life in the past, but I believe it does more. It reveals our shared humanity.
In one of my favorite books, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A treatise, Critique, and Call to Action, JF Martel states that “… what the Modern west calls art is the direct result of a basic human drive, an inborn expressivity that is inextricably bound with creative imagination. It is less the product of culture than a process manifesting through the cultural sphere. One could go so far as to argue that art must exist in order for culture to emerge in the first place.”
The art that is left to us through history gives a glimpse of our shared humanity across time and across cultures. We get to see a forgotten part of ourselves, something reaching deeper into what it means to be human.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 441
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
The most perennially popular category of art is the cheerful, pleasant, and pretty kind: meadows in spring, the shade of trees on hot summer days, pastoral landscapes, smiling children. This can be deeply troubling to people of taste and intelligence.
… The worries about prettiness are twofold. First, pretty pictures are alleged to feed sentimentality. Sentimentality is a symptom of insufficient engagement with complexity, by which one really means problems. The pretty picture seems to suggest that in order to make life nice, one merely has to brighten up the apartment with a depiction of some flowers. If we were to ask the picture what is wrong with the world, it might be taken as saying ‘You don’t have enough Japanese water gardens’ – a response that appears to ignore all the more urgent problems that confront humanity (primarily economic, but also moral, political, and sexual). The very innocence and simplicity of the picture seems to mitigate against any attempt to improve life as a whole. Secondly, there is the related fear that prettiness will numb us and leave us insufficiently critical and alert to the injustices surrounding us.
Alain de Botton and John Armstrong in Art as Therapy
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