1/27/10
Naive & Informed Passion
Naive passion, which promotes work done in ignorance of obstacles, becomes--with courage--informed passion, which promotes work done in full acceptance of those obstacles.
1/24/10
Slight answer to that previous 'somehow' on marrying expectations with reality
Control, apparently, is not the answer. People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous. What's really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding wilingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way. Simply put, making art is chancy--it doesn't mix well with predictability. Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite for succeeding.
I may never be like any of these people but...
.... reading this makes me happy...
Life and Art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable; at age ninety Frank Lloyd Wright was still designing, Imogen Cunningham still photographing, Stravinsky still composing, Picasso still painting.
1/23/10
1/20/10
Artwork Fraction
The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.
This reminds me a bit of the Passion & The Muse theory I wrote about in a post below...
This reminds me a bit of the Passion & The Muse theory I wrote about in a post below...
That damn gap
Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.
What we intend to do can be translated into our desires. Our fantasies. How we envision things to be. In other words, our expectations. What we did is basically reality. This is the old dilemma of expectations vs. reality. We often have dreams, fantasies and they become our expectations. Reality often tends to be different from what we hoped, envisioned. Oftentimes then we decide our dreams, fantasies and thus our expectations are what dooms us. This doesn't necessarily have to be true. Without our dreams & fantasies, we wouldn't be able to imagine things that can make the world a better place. I think these hopes are at the core of creation, this sort of faith that we exercise when we try things out. Oftentimes when reality turns out to be so different from our expectations we feel foolish and our first instinct can be to condemn our desires. But this is not the solution, I'm certain of that. We need our foolish hopes, desires, dreams, expectations. We need them. It's just that somehow, we have to be able to accept them in spite of reality. Somehow we have to learn to love reality as much as our dreams. Somehow reality and expectations have to meet, and not start a war. Somehow we have to accept them both, and love them both, and have them work together.
I don't know this 'somehow' just yet. But I'm working on it.
What we intend to do can be translated into our desires. Our fantasies. How we envision things to be. In other words, our expectations. What we did is basically reality. This is the old dilemma of expectations vs. reality. We often have dreams, fantasies and they become our expectations. Reality often tends to be different from what we hoped, envisioned. Oftentimes then we decide our dreams, fantasies and thus our expectations are what dooms us. This doesn't necessarily have to be true. Without our dreams & fantasies, we wouldn't be able to imagine things that can make the world a better place. I think these hopes are at the core of creation, this sort of faith that we exercise when we try things out. Oftentimes when reality turns out to be so different from our expectations we feel foolish and our first instinct can be to condemn our desires. But this is not the solution, I'm certain of that. We need our foolish hopes, desires, dreams, expectations. We need them. It's just that somehow, we have to be able to accept them in spite of reality. Somehow we have to learn to love reality as much as our dreams. Somehow reality and expectations have to meet, and not start a war. Somehow we have to accept them both, and love them both, and have them work together.
I don't know this 'somehow' just yet. But I'm working on it.
A view on Fatalism
fatalism: [...] it is a species of fear -- the fear that your fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak.
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