April 2011 Journal Notes.

4.23.11  Great artists are seldom comfortable with the art establishment, juries who would critique their work, with schools and academies. And the animosity tends to be mutual.

Perhaps it is because academies, juries, the established order of things are about judging talent, and great artists are about hard work, the sensitivity to see deeply, persistence through rejection and patience with a vision. And fierceness--great artists tend to be fierce. They're usually not nice people. To them, talent is an obstacle, a hindrance.

    Do you know what is the greatest enemy of the artist? Talent, the gift he's born with: facility, dexterity. In a word, chic (banal or empty facility) is what spoils us and ruins us. We think we've arrived at the summit of our art no sooner than we've produced something, and we look no further. . . - Rodin

4.16.11 April Daily Journal. Artists who paint abstractions are not creators that create something that is not easily explained or understood.  They do not try to create enigmas.  For every abstract artist their work is an encounter, first for them and the work of art but also for the participating viewers.  Every genuine artist speaks a personal language that is compounded in a unique way out of their whole being, their talent, their training, their hearts, their brains there cargo of experience. That whole being molds and forces itself to canvas or paper. It the painter's strength is storytelling, the image on the canvas may be straightforward or an illustration.  But if the painter is a philosopher, then they much concoct visual images to snare the abstract the mystery and create landscapes that are quite different from how one understands landscapes.

4.15.11. I believe that "art" is part intuition and part analytical thought.   Some artists rely more on analytical thought than others. Artists that rely more on analytical thought are artists of "techne."  The creative act for other artists is more spontaneous more intuitive. These artists, the artists whose art is spontaneous and intuitive have moved beyond the notion of art as "techne" or analytical thought.  These artists find it hard to color within the lines. These artists have a history and this history informs what they create but they are not afraid to follow the melody of their own song to follow their intuition.

Part of nurturing intuition is remaining detached, maintaining a perspective that can only come from distance. If you hook into exciting ideas quickly, jump into exciting projects with both feet without giving them time to percolate in the back of your mind, your creative work has a power that it would not have should you have relied on "techne." The power comes from the creative act alone. If art relies solely on "techne" then it is not creative.  White art is the act of creating.  The act of creating is not always creative.

4.9.2011.

The wonder of a bird

from the patterns in their feathers

to the way they fly.

What a beautiful, beautiful

marvel.  

I often dream I am flying,

I don't have wings

in my dreams,

I float as if I am on a

magic carpet.  

I soar - like a bird.

What a wonder I am.

4/7/2011 The order of things.  Foucault encouraged by Michiavelli's statement regarding the order of things wrote an entire treatise challenging "the order of things."  I love this notion, to challenge the order of things, not just to challenge order per say, but to challenge order as a notion that things need to be ordered, that reality is ordered.  This is a marvelous challenge. 

4/6/11 Daily Thought

When we live by time, that is by; what day it is, what time the clock tells us it is, what month the calendar tells us we are in living in then we loose a sense of the imaginary.  We are unable to imagine the unimagined.

4/3/2011 Daily Thought

Being an artist is a matter of the mind and the spirit. There has to be a psychological readiness for art. There are many copiers of likeness but few true artists. The job of artists who came before me was to encourage creativity not influence it, my job is the same that is to encourage creativity not influence it.