Creativity only goes as far as you are willing to take it. Or are able to take it, depending upon the level of your craft. There are few things more frustrating than to find an idea that excites your passion and then struggle with the process. Over time I have realized this experience brings up two points. The first is what we perceive others are doing, and the second is what we think we are doing - or not doing - well enough.
This desire to get things right is part of the learning process and one that can trip an artist up in subtle ways. Every color choice is second guessed, every brush mark repeated until the original idea is totally lost beneath layers of what we think other artists might have done.
I've gone through - and continue to flirt with - many such periods over the years: my Wolf Kahn period, the Richard Diebenkorn period - all of which served small purposes but not the large issues we ought to really care about. Like how we learn from other artists without trapping ourselves. And by trapping I mean repeating only what we see - or think we see - without thinking about it on our own.
So in the beginning we find ourselves duplicating what we see and sometimes we get so good at this we don't see any need to change. Until we come across those ideas that just have to be painted - but aren't, because we don't know how. Maybe we don't know how because our influences have never painted similar subjects to provide us with a guide. Or we don't know how because we're afraid we can't paint it to the art world establishment's expectations. Either way creativity becomes limited to what we know, believe others know, and fear.
A few years ago I changed the way I learn from other artists. My reasoning had to do with my desire to call myself an artist, to take ownership and responsibility for my art as it relates to my personal growth. Now when I study a single artist, or two and three at a time, I am looking for knowledge: how did the artist layer his paint, or use values, or direct my eye around the painting? What was he - or she - trying to communicate and how are the elements in the painting contributing to the whole? Conceptually, how can I apply this to the way that I work and paint?
Yes, there are times when I feel the idea for a painting is slipping away from me, and I wish someone else would solve my problems. But now I take more time to plan. I use thumbnails more, paint several studies and view them in reverse using a hand mirror. This gives me distance, and a different sense of the abstract arrangement so I can settle on the strongest approach. I think about the concepts as I understand them, and my creative vision for the painting. Then I start to work.
Sometimes a painting is successful, other times there are flaws that ultimately contribute to the learning process. But I work toward that day when I can feel the knowledge move from my inner vision through my hand and the brush, and on to the canvas. As a consequence, my relationship with art is changing, and with that change the fear is being replaced with creativity. I wish the same for all of you.
The Big Empty, 16 x 20, oil on linen © S F Smith 2011
I guess - well I know - I have a long way to go as an artist. Reading this post I realise that when I look at the work of other artists I don't look at their technique so much as colour and composition. In part that is because I work primarily as a printmaker, so oil painting techniques say, are not directly of value. Mainly though it is because I just don't know where to start, my own technical ability being so limited.
On the other hand, that lack of knowledge can be a bonus. I can try things for myself, without worrying that someone else has already done it and out of that comes real personal creativity and learning.
This realisation that personal creativity is separate from the sort of originality (or perhaps novelty) that is the focus of so much of the 'professional' art world is what enables me to keep working.
Posted by: Ian | May 24, 2011 at 06:54 AM