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REMEDIOS VARO
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TOM WUDL DRAWINGS
ARTIST: AGNES PELTON
July 29, 2008
For many artists and those who want to be ARTISTS with a capital A there is pain everywhere.
There is the pain of not knowing what you are doing. Not knowing where you are going.
Not knowing if you are accepted or rejected.
There is the pain of desperately craving attention and approval.
There is the pain of feeling inadequate, the pain of lacking accreditation, the fear of exposure. The pain of comparing yourself to others, the envy of others.
Oh, yes the pain of wondering how to do it.
How to figure out what the right combination of strategies is.
Where is that million-dollar idea?
How will I come up with my flag painting?
Or my soup can?
How can I succeed?
How can I win?
Who will show me how to do it?
There is more ...........
If my friends don't think I am crazy, they are nonetheless patronizing.
Other artists are in competition with me.
My husband, wife or partner are supportive but to a point.
There is a threshold to their tolerance.
I'M TOO OLD...
I CAN'T AFFORD IT...
NOBODY CARES ...
IT'S HARD! ...
IT'S PAINFUL! …
IT'S LONELY! ...
WHAT'S THE POINT?
If this is your internal monologue, then it's true. There is no point. I say stop fooling yourself. GET REAL! and get out.
For the truly creative there is only one pain: Not being able to do the work.
For a truly creative person the greatest anguish is being deprived of putting brush to canvas. Deprived of touching. Deprived of physical contact with the medium. Being deprived of time to dream, to loose oneself without direction, without a purpose. For the truly creative it is heart-wrenching not to be free to do what they want.
Art has no practical purpose or application. Its sole function is to give meaning to our lives. It does this because it is the only activity where we can be free to be ourselves. Free means free. It does not mean we get paid to be ourselves. It means free to be ourselves. Free financially. Free intellectually. Free to be dumb. Free to be inept. Free to not know what we are doing.
Free to discover, by trial and error, who we are.
FREE TO ACCEPT OURSELVES AS WE ARE.
We are already completely ourselves. We are already the complete Artist. All we need do is to accept who we are.
When we start a new painting we feel good. We feel great. We feel free. Later we don't feel so good. Later we start thinking “No one will understand”.
We don't trust our vision so we think I don't know what I am doing. Etc etc. etc etc etc etc..............
The truly creative person has only one obligation. To ensure they remain free.
As creative individuals we are placed in a predicament where we must re-commit to be free to be ourselves from moment to moment. One micro-mili-second can derail us. In one blink we exchange our freedom for slavery.
The earthquake today taught us a lesson: To be alert from moment to moment. Just pay attention to what is happening every moment until it’s over. That is the vigilance we employ to stay free lest we fall into slavery.
Years ago I heard a Buddhist priest give a sermon. The first words out of his mouth were THE WIND COMES IN THROUGH THE CRACK IN THE WALL AND THE DEMON COMES IN TROUGH THE CRACK IN THE MIND. The crack in the mind is that moment when you become complacent. That micro instant when your guard is down and you exchange your birth-given creative freedom for slavery to ideas, markets, and cravings for approval.
O.K. as John Cage said. "Our ears are now perfectly in tune."
Have a good day.
June 21, 2008
A topic that came up a few times this week, concerns the misconception some people have regarding educating one's self. A common misunderstanding seems to be that if one studies many subjects, reads a lot of books, that this is somehow a prerequisite to be more fully creative.
People imagine that their creativity will be a distillation of all they have studied. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Study is important but it does not facilitate creativity. Study illuminates, informs, gives a sense of direction, and a sense of place. That is what is meant by context. To imagine that expression is the synthesis or summation of gathered information is unfortunately not correct.
The creative act is not a synthesis. It is an independent, autonomous act, a self-willed, fresh exploration that may be informed by study but is never an illustration or regurgitation or summation of learned data.
A very easy way to understand what I am trying to say in so clumsy a manner is this: It may be helpful to read books on meditation, but all the reading will not yield one insight. A thousand hours of study, a million pages of reading are meaningless. Yes meaningless. One hour of meditation can transform heaven and earth. Siting in meditation is accomplished by trial and error that yields experience that is reliable and unequivocal. Experience that may in its factual truth be very different from what the imagination constructs out of all the study. That is why in Buddhism it is often said: “If you meet the Buddha, kill him”.
This week I also made reference to the mind being like the soil in a garden. Fertile soil generates everything. Prize Roses and Irises and… every kind of unwanted weed. We come along and "cultivate" the garden by pulling the weeds throw them in the compost and then use them to fertilize the flowers. In like manner we could say that our minds generate noble as well as unwanted thoughts all simultaneously. We "cultivate" the mind by not attaching to thoughts but merely observe them burst forth and be replaced by other and yet more thoughts and ideas continually like weeds. After a while practiced observation replaces meaningless thinking worrying and fretting. Every thing is self evident and obvious.
When we loose ourselves in our work, when we PERMIT ourselves to loose ourselves in our work, to be free to do what we want without worrying or fretting , only feeling…then everything will be obvious and the meaning, the program, the direction, we anguish and fret over will be self-evident.
A topic that came up a few times this week, concerns the misconception some people have regarding educating one's self. A common misunderstanding seems to be that if one studies many subjects, reads a lot of books, that this is somehow a prerequisite to be more fully creative.
People imagine that their creativity will be a distillation of all they have studied. Unfortunately that is not the case.
Study is important but it does not facilitate creativity. Study illuminates, informs, gives a sense of direction, and a sense of place. That is what is meant by context. To imagine that expression is the synthesis or summation of gathered information is unfortunately not correct.
The creative act is not a synthesis. It is an independent, autonomous act, a self-willed, fresh exploration that may be informed by study but is never an illustration or regurgitation or summation of learned data.
A very easy way to understand what I am trying to say in so clumsy a manner is this: It may be helpful to read books on meditation, but all the reading will not yield one insight. A thousand hours of study, a million pages of reading are meaningless. Yes meaningless. One hour of meditation can transform heaven and earth. Siting in meditation is accomplished by trial and error that yields experience that is reliable and unequivocal. Experience that may in its factual truth be very different from what the imagination constructs out of all the study. That is why in Buddhism it is often said: “If you meet the Buddha, kill him”.
This week I also made reference to the mind being like the soil in a garden. Fertile soil generates everything. Prize Roses and Irises and… every kind of unwanted weed. We come along and "cultivate" the garden by pulling the weeds throw them in the compost and then use them to fertilize the flowers. In like manner we could say that our minds generate noble as well as unwanted thoughts all simultaneously. We "cultivate" the mind by not attaching to thoughts but merely observe them burst forth and be replaced by other and yet more thoughts and ideas continually like weeds. After a while practiced observation replaces meaningless thinking worrying and fretting. Every thing is self evident and obvious.
When we loose ourselves in our work, when we PERMIT ourselves to loose ourselves in our work, to be free to do what we want without worrying or fretting , only feeling…then everything will be obvious and the meaning, the program, the direction, we anguish and fret over will be self-evident.