Watching vs. Doing

Relinquish 30" x 30" mixed media

An artist friend that just watched my video commented that she wanted to see me paint more in it. I chuckled at that.  Everyone wants to see how the magic happens, but I’ve come to think that it can become a diversion to someone else’s process to spend too much time watching mine.  I mean, I paint the way I paint because of the myriad of experiences I’ve encountered. The fact that I studied etching and printmaking as an undergrad, my struggles with crossing from black and white to color, my stint as a computer programmer, my somewhat melancholic outlook on life, my struggle to understand the purpose of it all. All these things influence the way I place a mark on the canvas. I don’t drip a line just because I can; I drip it because something cries out in me that can only be expressed by that drip.  For someone else to see that and think, hey, that dripping is cool and then to drip just to drip would be to miss the point.

 I think I mentioned before the book “No More Secondhand Art” by Peter London.  One of my favorite quotes is “It is better to rise to the questions Monet did then to mimic his responses”.  I think that watching other artists paint seduces us into wanting to mimic their responses, and we are such good imitators! It is so much easier to try on and experiment with someone else’s innovations and discoveries that to face the blank canvas and find our own voice and mark that evokes it.

I believe that Art is about more than technique, and technique is about more than a toolbox of tricks. In order to discover who we are as unique individuals with something personal to say through our art, we have to find our own way of ordering marks and colors. That is why I feel my best service, as a teacher, is to help each artist put together a toolbox of skills that they can then use to go out and innovate with. They must discover all the marks that only they can make, all the colors that they can mix, first hand, by doing!

My process has developed over a lifetime of moving marks and paint around on the canvas.  It also doesn't follow the same approach every time. How can I demonstrate that? I try to remain open to discovery and chance each time I face the canvas, because I feel that is what life is about.  Here is an example of the above painting in process, and I think watching it evolve over the course of several weeks shows how open I am to letting the painting take it's own direction. Go out and paint, stop worrying about how to do it, stop watching how everyone else is doing it, take a tip from Nike and "Just do it"!

To become a better artist?

I began this years teaching by asking my students what their goals were. A common response was "I want to become a better artist". Hmmmm. So, I have been given the arduous task of asking them to define what "better" means to them. Do they mean technically better? Drawing more accurately, seeing more accurately, finding color notes better? What do they believe getting better will achieve? More sales? Respect from other artists? Personal joy? All of the above? Unfortunately, the sad truth is, the better we become as artists, the more critical we become and the more it takes to wow us, so "better" is a goal that keeps on moving further and further away. I used to be able to go to an art show and come away inspired, now I often come away disappointed. It is hard to find anything of merit other than technical prowess and more of the same. The more of a connoisseur we become in anything, the harder it is to find things that satisfy our sophisticated palette. Think of wine and cheese. The same is true in art. The more I know about painting, the more I want to see artists find new ways of solving old problems. As a painting teacher, I feel I am not teaching them a craft that is to be proliferated redundantly, I want them to create work that comes from their individuality. Individuality often means non-conforming so it doesn't always translate into popularity as the majority of people will admire and praise the familiar.

One of my favorite authors on this subject is Peter London. In one of his books he cautions that anyone can be taught how to paint like Monet, stroke for stroke, but although the external result may look the same, the internal process is totally different. It is like jumping to the end of the story and only reading the last page. Every choice Monet made in refining his technique came from personal discovery. He didn't begin as an impressionist painter he evolved and discovered a new way of seeing that was uniquely his own. A way that was vehemently rejected by traditional art norms of the day.

So for me, becoming a "better" artist, is to become an artist that continues to search and remain open to the discoveries that are revealed along the way. "Better" doesn't guarantee "satisfied", to continue to grow, we must never be stalled by anyone's satisfaction, even our own!