Finding your work....

To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question. But those really personal problems all relate to the making of the art. Once the art has been made, an entirely new set arise, problems that require the artist to engage the outside world. Call them ordinary problems or not. Ordinary problems are not, however, trivial problems. Among other things the large part of almost every artist's time.

More is Good

Artist get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones, they get better by learning to work and by learning from their work. They commit themselves to the work of their heart, and act upon that commitment. It is all in the numbers. The more work you do, the more likely you are to create work you find meaningful and excites you.

Finding your voice and more......

All things considered, in most matters of art it is more nourishing to be a maker than a viewer. But not in all matters. When it comes to the range of art viewers remain tantalizingly inaccessible to art makers. As a listener you can be transported to authentic ecstasy and catharsis by a performance of the Bach B -minor Mass, but as a maker you cannot compose even the most trivial piece of authentic baroque music. As a viewer you can fell the charge in the presence of the Plains Indian medicine bundle, but as a twentieth century artist you could not begin to make one yourself.

Talent.....

For every artist who has developed a mature vision with grace and speed, countless others have laboriously nurtured their art through fertile periods and dry spells, through false starts and breakaway bursts, through successive and significant changes of direction, mediums, and subject matter. Talent may get someone off the stating block to strive faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much. The world is filled people who were given great natural gifts, sometimes conspicuously flashy gifts, yet never produce a thing. And when that happens the world ceases to care whether they are talented