FROM JOE, A READER:
Great words.
I paint for joy. For me, art adds to life. My life would be less without it.
An odd realization that I’ve had that you probably worked through years and years ago: If a piece turns out good, it becomes a part of me. I am interested in neither selling it nor giving it away. If it turns out poorly (right now, the ratio is about 3 of 4), I have no issue at all with painting over that canvas.
Hyatt, you are obviously part psychologist…so what does that mean? And especially from a Christian perspective.
Thursday’s blog on Art and Fear generated some good responses, including a question from Joe Black. Joe is a writer, a columnist, and a part time painter. He tells me he came across this blog sometime last year and signed on.
I’ve copied and pasted his comment at left. If I’m interpreting it correctly, he’s not interested in selling art but rather in finding his highest self (art-wise). He keeps the best and destroys (paints over) the lesser. He asks for my response, and from a Christian perspective.
The latter I’ll not touch. Who knows what the Master might say; Jesus’s answers so often unsettling and piercing into the motives of the heart. It seems to me Joe’s motives are plenty pure . . . not willing to release substandard work for any price, nor for that matter, his best work either. He paints for joy, and is rewarded about once in four.
Are the rest of them joy too, in the pursuit? We’d have to ask him.
There is certainly a chance that his success ratio will grow. Good art comes from making lots of art.
Here’s another quote from the book, Art and Fear:
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. Even the failed pieces are essential. The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand as finished art.
The principle is the same, whatever our pursuit.
As far as wanting to keep your best pieces, I understand . . . but in time you may be willing to let them go (if there’s reason enough), as our own sense of “best” changes and grows.
Meantime, more power to you Joe.
By the way, I feel somewhat the same about these blog posts. Those I let pass I do hope reflect the inner me. The rest, I paint over.
But the whole process is a joy.
Hope you’re all experiencing that.
____________________
* Art and Fear, Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles and Ted Orland
Our Lives Together
Its About Life
9:49 am
Scary. I think we share the same brain. :)
As always, great encouragement and reminders. And, yes, the PROCESS of painting can bring joy. Sometimes there is struggle, as you wrestle with the expression of it. And satisfaction comes only after breakthroughs into an excellence as you flow into it. But, wrestling included, the entire process is fulfilling and joyful, if you don’t argue with yourself. :)
1:33 pm
You already know I’m snagged. Like a walk in the woods and a be-briared branch “reaches out” and forces you to stop and negotiate. Do I pull ahead in my impatience for the goal on the trail ahead, thus another villainous act on my wife’s selected hiking wardrobe. Or do I patiently unweave or unhook the gnarly little rascal. Oh, wait, wassat? My what a pretty little flower right there ‘neath the briar. Creator: is this a message from You?
Yes, there’s such a thing as “passive snagging.” Mostly I read the slate’s chalk marks, smile, maybe muse, then go on my way knowing we’re all but twins staying in touch but hardly touching.
So I keep dabbling my own colors on the Blank Slate. But this one set down on my own path just right. You see, I decided to write My Manifesto(with all the Webster stuff, my motives, values, intentions, observations, wishes for others, etc.).
What a surprise, this joy. It’s for my legacy, those generations down the increasingly rocky and harsh road of God’s crumbling planet. I love the telling, and I love the hearing; hearing from the Lord as He helps me recount a life of unearned, even unreasonable, grace.
So this is my canvas today. Sitting in the travel trailer-cum-studio listing to Wesley brothers classics by a choir’s CD, and talking and hearing. Page six and the intro is almost finished. Blank slate? Maybe a blank warehouse of white boards.
Thanks for your artful prodding, dear friend. Oh, and like it must be as it is with my Carolyn, let Anne have all the credit she deserves for both freeing and inspiring you. If I were suddenly rich and in an art-buying mood, I think I’d snatch one of her fully textured works up first.
3:05 pm
“But the whole process is a joy…” That says it all, Hyatt, and that’s so much you, and Anne. It’s the central thing I learn from the both of you. We all live in our own past-future prisons, but you seem to have been freed from a great deal of it. Joe’s thoughts are longing for this from the way he explains his approach to art. It’s what Brennan Manning describes as the “Geography of Nowhere” i.e. now-here. For me, living in the present moment with my God is the ultimate experience in this life. Those times are mere glimpses, small moments that come not so frequently, and always unplanned. Moments of pure joy, moments of our Glory. Art, whether it be one of your wife’s prints, one of your paintings, or one of Alison’s photographs, they each compel us to move towards that moment of being our authentic selves as we were intended to be … at peace with, and one with our Father.
5:05 pm
I am honored to be a part of Hyatt’s blog.
What I’ve now realized is that I need to be open to how God might want me to use any ability that I have. Sort of like everything else….