Encouragement from Professional Artists

I read the following words just when I needed the encouragement to continue with my efforts. Today I’ve decided to share them with you - I hope they bring you the same comfort and sustenance. Enjoy!

• “Create a supportive group for yourself.” – Christina Acosta
• “Maintain a daily connection with your ideas and your personal mark-making. You can achieve this with just one thirty-second drawing a day.” – Jen Bradley
• “Trust your instincts and find your own way. Learn from artists you admire personally and professionally. Don’t be too hard on yourself as you discover who you are and how to best express it.” – Cynthia Britain
• “. It’s never too late to be what you should have always been.” – Robert Burridge
• “If you’re painting your emotions, it’s your visual self.” – Bonnie Casey
• Collect samples of everything you like, things that move you. Take them home and analyse what it is that moves you…look for the ‘Aha!’ Then do it your own way.” – Cheri Christensen
• “You need a dedicated space where you paint, even it it’s a corner of the living room. When you put things away, you put your art life away. Make a space for your art.” – Connie Connally
• “Take classes from people who are technically gifted. Get a profound grasp of the technical side.” – Brian Davis
• “Talent is helpful, but it is the constant working that moves and artist to a new level. Also, don’t fight your true self.” – Rhonda Egan
• “The most important thing is not to worry about selling your art. Just play. Play with all the materials. So much of what makes a painting beautiful are the accidents.” – Anne Embree
• “I am interested in painting the sublime, that aesthetic experience of being overwhelmed and filled with awe at something so majestic that it evokes a sense of the eternal.” – Nicora Gangi
• “Just stick with whatever looks and feels right to you. Try lots of things and see what might fit you best.” – Vince Gasparich
• “I stress the value of simplicity. That one clear response, the message behind the painting, should sing out loud and strong. Select the essence of what you are painting and leave out all extraneous detail.” – Jean Grastorf
• “I believe that every artist has his or her own vision of the world; our job as artists is to find and express that vision. The most important thing is to keep exploring, yourself and your materials.” – Carole Katchen
• “Time to paint isn’t something you find, it is something you need to make.” – Linda Kemp
• “Accepting yourself is where you find your fufillment.” – Liz Kenyon
• “The best tool for good composition is one’s instinct. Painters must be loose and nurture confidence in themselves.” – Madeline Lemire
• “Remember that you are not painting a picture, you are creating a painting.” – Peggy McGivern
• “You paint your heartbeat. You have to follow what you respond to, not what you think someone else expects from you.” – Joan McKasson
• “Paint often and joyfully.” – Helaine Mclain
• “Don’t worry about being influenced by others, because it is natural. But you need to make it your own so you can go on.” – Carla O’Connor
• “Keep a book of clippings of paintings you really like, such as unusual compositions and good designs.” – Camille Przewodek
• “Try to stay out of your own way. The biggest Challenge is this.” – Barbara Rainforth
• “Your nature should dictate how you paint. You may love a painting and a painter, but it might not be you. Everyone has a certain greatness; your greatness is your uniqueness developed. So you have to discover you uniqueness.” – Susan Sarbeck
• “Work hard and get the basics.” – Marilyn Simandle
• “At times, put yourself in uncomfortable situations with your artwork. Enrich your life with experiences.” – Shawn Snow
• “You have to make yourself uneasy at times to make a painting successful.” – Leslie Toms
• “Learn to love nature and love life. If you appreciate life and nature, your paintings with show this.” – Lian Zhen

Words of encouragement indeed!
Keep Creative and Happy,
Debs

Above painting, "Wheatfield View" © 2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow

Express Yourself!

This week I draw upon artist Ian Roberts’s wisdom and vision. I can’t put it better than this so I'll use direct quotes. Enjoy his words of truth and encouragement.

In a great book entitled Creative Authenticity, artist Ian Roberts (Ian Roberts website) talks about just jumping in, fears and all, to express ourselves.
"Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the world whether you paint or dance or write," says Roberts. "The world will probably get by without the product of your efforts. But that is not the point. The point is what the inner process of following your creative impulses will do to you. It is clearly about process. Love the work, love the process. Our fascination will pull our attention forward. That, also, will fascinate the viewer."
Roberts explores a number of principles essential for creative authenticity.

• Searching for beauty. Beauty is something that seizes your attention, stops you in your tracks, and silences you. It can be the way light filters through the trees in your backyard or the magnificence of a fifteenth century Italian painting. The subject is irrelevant; it is only a vehicle for your attention, to engage the intensity of your feelings. That intensity is what viewers ultimately respond to.
• Communication. Creativity fundamentally involves expressive power; it is the catching of the "gleams of light" that flash across our mind and forming that vision into something.
• Your home turf. It could be a garden. Or a studio. But you need a creative home base that always stays open for your arrival and bestows on you a readiness to begin your work.
• The Van Gogh syndrome. Don't buy into the myth that creativity is the province of tortured geniuses.
• Your craft, your voice. Practice, practice, practice your craft. It gives you fluency in the creative process and in technique. It's technique that gives life to your creative ideas. Learning your craft opens the channel for your voice to flow.
  
• Showing up. "Nothing determines your creative life more than doing it," says Roberts.
• The dance of avoidance. Starting is always a psychologically messy process, because there are no rules surrounding what you want to do. Setting up a dedicated space for the practice of your craft helps you shift gears directly into your creative process.
• Full-time or part-time. You can't expect to fly consistently at a high level of inspiration.
• Follow something along. If you are going to say something authentic, you need to stick with an idea for a while, an idea that has personal resonance.
• Wagon train and scout. Creativity involves the interplay between where you are and where you see yourself going to keep your expression growing. Always be on the lookout for new paths, and observe how others solve the problems you face.
• Working method. Creativity is in the process, not in the finished results.
• Limits yield intensity. Unrestrained freedom is a myth, and it's not productive.
• Being ready to show. Don't spend your time marketing your creations. If you spend it creating, you are investing your work with the authenticity that will draw others to your efforts...
• You are more than creative enough. The question is not whether you are creative enough but whether you will free yourself to express it.
• Finding poetry in the everyday. Develop the power to see the ordinary as poetic.
• Holding the big picture. Always keep a sense of the whole. That commits you to making the moves that will ultimately represent what you see.

Following the Visual Voice

What speaks to you when you see another piece of art / sculpture / craft?

For me it’s colour and texture. Obviously it’s a huge influence on my own painting. However, it doesn’t come naturally that just because I see something that takes my breath away that I can reproduce something of the same ilk!

What tends to happen is that artists, through experimenting and understanding of themselves and their work, develop a recognisable style – the visual voice. The conveyance of the artist’s meaning through inspiration, subject matter, art elements, composition and the process.

“[The visual voice] is the piece of magic inside ourselves - the amazing actuality within us.” – Cristina Acosta

Luckily for me as an intermediate discoverer, there were artists who are willing to share their experiences and advice, and since taking note of them, I am making a more focussed route to my desired approach to creating. (A quick mention is deserved here of Megan Chapman – she has been amazingly helpful through her blogspot and review.)

The resulting understanding of what was within and how to express it was the catalyst to beginning to find my visual voice. Then came the sifting out of what was working and what wasn’t. Before that I had spent most of my life looking at art and experimenting with different media and had already built up an inner connection with certain styles. I admit I'm not there yet, but I'm well on my way :)

It’s never too late get in touch with yourself again, and I suggest that a reminding of your original source of inspiration is very important to your creative path.

How to do this?

Well, keep visiting galleries / workshops / museums / art shops and the like. Make a date to visit events when they pop up. It’s too easy to get bogged down in your studio. Even a walk along the coast or nearest nature reserve can do it. I own a dog and it’s a great way to get outside and see things as they change with the seasons and light. Even if I’m not painting what I see, what I do get is a refreshing of my connection with my creative self. Stepping out for a few hours blows away cobwebs and allows new inspirations in.

So you see it’s vitally important to keep the passion alive for your art. Without it our works won’t be inspiring to others or have any authenticity to them. The spirit in your work will be evident through the response of the viewer.

Good luck with your journey – there’s always something to chase away the blues and get in touch with your visual voice.

painting above: Summer Evening at Shingle Street (c) 2008 Deborah Eileen Burrow