Twenty Reasons

In Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Life, she takes an idea from Leonardo da Vinci who, in his notebooks, makes lists of twenty "aspects of rivers and currents he intended to study". She suggests as an exercise in thoroughness to write "twenty things you want to know about" whatever it is you plan to approach.

I'm doing this in hindsight since I've begun my Tangle series. Here's my list of 20 things I like about tangles.

1. The toy is fun to play with.
2. Invented by a sculptor.
3. It never makes a straight line.
4. I can "pose" it.
5. Creates a 3D calligraphic line.
6. Painting it feels a lot like painting the human figure.
7. Creates shadow patterns that are different from the image.
8. Looks like something that explains something else.
9. It's colorful.
10. It keeps the eye moving around the image.
11. It keeps the mind busy.
12. It looks like you could crawl into it.
13. Has multiple connotations.
14. Produces more ideas on how to represent it on canvas.
15. It challenges my ability to push the idea.
16. It's different from my usual subject matter.
17. It's objective.
18. The background color is subjective.
19. It's contemporary.
20. I like it.

What's in a Word?

On the whole creative vs. innovative thing. That's just my take on the words. The word "creative" used to mean more than it does now, in my estimation. It's gotten watered down by kit crafters putting together someone's mass produced idea of an art object and receiving praise with the well-worn phrase, "Oh, you're so creative!"

To me, the word "creative" doesn't mean the dictionary definition "resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative" any more. Whereas, the word "innovative" denotes (again to me), something new and exciting, a change from the established, an idea tweaked, pushed, moved forward even just a little bit. As another artist refers to it, "a visual speed bump." Something that makes you slow down and take a second look.

Jenny Saville's paintings, for instance. She's a British artist who does huge paintings of large figures, usually women. She took painting the nude to a new level. She went huge with huge. There are many more elements to her paintings that make them innovative, but even just that one element was the result of innovative thinking. We can take one scale and change it to make it different. We've all learned that in one class or another. However, she took it way further. Her paintings are several feet by several feet. The woman has to use a scaffold to paint!

Here's more on Jenny Saville, the bravest, gutsiest paint-pusher this side of Lucian Freud.

The Medium and the Medium

In the summer of 1994, I went to a woman of psychic talents with two questions. At the time, I had a green boot box (bigger than a shoe box) with tubes of oil paints that I had not touched in 10 years. My questions were, Should I paint? Or, should I throw the paints away?

That might seem like one question with two parts, but, to me, they were entirely two questions because the answers could be life changing. This or that?

Her answer was, "Oh, yes, you must paint. You are an artist. You have been an artist in many life times."

Well, I didn't feel like an artist and I denied being an artist and we went back and forth about it and then she introduced me to my spirit art guide. Whoa. OK, now I was feeling like I was floating in salt water, but that's another story.

My point is, I opened the green box of oil paints and I began to begin. To back up a moment, the paints were left over from classes I had taken at the university in my town. I had only ever painted in a class setting. I wasn't the child who drew all the time. I didn't "think" with a pencil and was constantly making pictures. Actually, I "think" in words and have to force myself to "picture" the words in order to make a painting. I have to be able to "see" it before I can paint it.

So taking this green box off the shelf was a really big deal. I decided I wasn't going to take a class to get back into painting. I told myself I had plenty of instruction (or was it my guide talking?) and it was time to let the medium (paints, brushes, etc., not the psychic) be the teacher.

Back then, I was totally terrified. It was lots of things. The responsibility, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the "what if"s, the blank canvas, the unknown. Looking back, it's like, geez it wasn't heart surgery, but it was huge for me then.

I learned some important stuff:

• Set up a space for your art. I ended up finding a space to rent.
• Be in your art space every day. Even if you're not creating something physically, you are creating something psychically.
• You can be your own teacher. Work with the materials and pay attention to what they tell you. Yellow paint will tell you something different than blue paint. They are as different as yellow and blue.
• Trust what you "hear". Your guide/s are talking to you. If it's different from what you'd say, then it's them taking.
• Take a chance -- do what they say. Some call it experimenting. I call it listening.
• There are no mistakes. Everything is a next step.
• Be grateful. Love what you are doing, making, being.
• You'll get better. Better and better. Better than ever.

Go to Your Nearest Gallery -- Now!

The Sunday newspaper suppliment, USA Weekend, in a special health report in partnership with Prevention, point out "A Swedish study found that people who viewed and talked about art had lower blood pressure, and they were happier." Hmmm. Does that apply to people who make art?

Get the Idea

In the July 12 NY Times, Holland Cotter has a review of Atta Kim's long-exposure photographs. Mr. Kim is Korean and a photographer and making his NY solo debut in a show at the International Center of Photography. It's a very insightful review and I encourage you to read it.

To me, the fascinating points Mr. Cotter brings out are these: First, he says Mr. Kim takes an old technique and uses new subjects. Secondly, he says Mr. Kim pushes the boundaries of a traditional method. Quoting Mr. Cotter, "Mr. Kim's work is more distinctive for it's ideas than for its technology."

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is exactly what I've been pushing to anyone who will listen. It's all about the idea. You can have beautiful technique and craftmanship and still bore your audience if the idea is not there.

Getting the idea is the big step the artist takes to go from "creative" to "innovative." You can feel the move into innovative thinking. Thinking is a brain exercise. When you pump up that muscle you can feel the difference. Your ideas will be fuller, pithier. It might happen that you won't be completely comfortable with your new idea, but you just know you've got something. Now your "intuition" is guiding you to believe.

Having said all that, I am reminded of the old adage, "we teach what we most need to learn." I may have been typing "you" this and "you" that, but what I've been saying, I've been saying to myself.

The Lizard's Tail

Cynthia Sommer writes a wonderful essay on Intuition on the "This I Believe" page of the NPR website. Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5545896

Creativity and the Good Listener

For the better part of this morning I've been working on layouts for my next three paintings. In doing so, it occurred to me that many of my ideas have geminated from bits of conversations that may or may not have been about art, specificially, but, more to the point, have sparked an idea that resulted in a painting or even developed into a series of paintings. And thinking further, it hasn't been strictly conversations but also music lyrics, book passages, and whatever else has come my way along the communication highway I'm traveling.

I must get back to what I'm doing, which is the beginning of three, 30 inch square paintings focusing in on a close-up of an object and the shadow it casts. With any luck, the paintings will be more exciting than the description.

Music as Muse

Music enlivens the artistic juices. Music entices the brush to dance. Music flirts, winks and seduces the image to appear on the canvas. Music sets and keeps the pace.

Music is so important to me in my creation of art. What I listen to while I'm working influences what I'm working on, therefore, I must be careful in my selection of music for the painting. I don't mean I'm painstakingly careful in my selection. I just mean I wouldn't choose, for the most part, anything in the "easy listening" catagory.

I like music with a strong, driving beat, like a pounding rain. Soak me in the sound. Vibrate every cell in my body. Shake me. Move me. Thrill me.

What happens a little later is that I'm not even conscious of the music. The music becomes the muse. Now painting is vibrating every cell in my body. I'm conscious and unconscious at the same time. I don't feel my body. I'm alive inside the paint. I exist on several planes. I travel. I commune. I'm drugged. I'm drunk. I can't explain it. I'm different. I'm fluid. I am so in love!

So what about you? What happens when you create? Does music play a part in your creation of art?