by Alison on June 7, 2010
Alas, it was not meant to be.
Today I scrapped a canvas I’d been developing for about three weeks. It had developed considerably from the initial sketch, taking on a life of its own as the image emerged, and I reacted. I really loved the direction it was going so much that I overworked an element, even though it didn’t fit in this particular canvas. Eventually, although it had many good elements, I removed the canvas from the stretchers and binned it. Elements were fussy, and out of balance. In addition, I had manipulated the surface of the painting to a point where it just didn’t pass the grade for my quality control. I just can’t stand to produce an imperfect work.
It is certainly true that I shouldn’t have poured thinner over it and then torn it from its stretchers, but so much emotion goes into painting, and so much of your personality, that sometimes the pot boils over in frustration, a ship on stormy waters, especially after very long painting sessions, like today.
Looking at the photo I took just before I pushed it too far, I am reassured that it would not have been a work I would have wanted to add to my portfolio, as it was. And there was no way I could have made the improvements I wanted to make, without basically painting over much of it.
Nevertheless, I will begin again tomorrow, this time with an improved composition, and with a new idea for what the focus of the painting will be. And it will be even better.
I have learned to accept that the path to improvement is strewn with failures. Trust me when I tell you that this doesn’t make the process any less exasperating, or painful. Allowing myself the space to fail is like allowing myself to take a full, deep breath.
It’s only Art, and there’s always tomorrow. I will begin again.
by Alison on February 13, 2010
Piet Mondrian - Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Grey and Blue - 1921
A very charming student from a local college visited me in my studio a few weeks ago, as they had to choose a living artist whose work they liked on whom to write a paper. She had literally twenty questions to ask me. One of the questions, the last one, stopped me in my tracks because of the response it engendered from me.
The most ordinary little question took me stumbling down a new path of understanding about myself, my art, and how it felt to be an artist.
She asked me, “Where do you get your inspiration?”.
I answered immediately with the first words that materialized, and as I said them I knew they were, for me, completely true: “Inspiration is irrelevant”.
She looked somewhat surprised, so I went on to explain my assertion to her. Each painting I create is a distillation of my experiences of perceiving and existing, they are my answer and reaction to simply being. My creative process requires me to cull and sculpt my possible artworks down to the chosen few that I can achieve in a day/week/month/year/lifetime. Being an artist fulfills every aspect of who I am and I am an artist every second.
Matisse, Joy of Life, 1905-6
There is a section in the book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark where the author describes Nature as writing questions and answers continually in the skies, and stones, and trees and grasses for those who can decode the language.
My ‘inspirational’ or creative process feels like a dialogue between the collection of experiences that comprise myself as well as my immutable core, and the lines, form, colors and light in the natural world.
She speaks, and I answer. I question, she replies.
I have no idea what she has told me or what I have replied on any conscious level, but each painting is a record of our conversation.
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>> Artist Deborah T. Colter has written her response to this post. Please visit her site to read it!<<
>>Artist Roslyn Dames has written about inspiration in response to my post. <<
