The book
The first chapter Identity hit home when she wrote that the worried advice artists get is: to have something to fall back on. This is the advice I'm giving my son (18) who is making his steps towards becoming an artist. It is wonderful and fascinating to follow his development and progress and how he's listening to his inner voice and becoming more assured where he wants to go. Me on the other hand, teacher and working with drop-outs, keeps hammering on the need to finish he education so he'll have a trade to fall back on (graphic designer) or it will be the step up for Art School. I think as long as I'm supportive of his art I'll hang on to the "finish school first" motto. I liked the story about the Elefant in " Becoming Larger", how people try to define who you are, no matter how well intended.
Morning Pages:
I haven't been writing them down because I had a problem with my right arm/neck/shoulder and writing made it worse. I have been taking each morning a half hour time to let my thoughts drift in the way I would have done writing them down.
Artist Date
I went with my son to an exhibition of Picasso in the Hague Museum. In the first chapter Julia speaks about taking action and small steps. At the same time I read an article on a research done about creativity and the myths involved. One of them beeing that creativity is this sudden moment of insight or inspiration versus the amount of work prior to the making of the art piece (the well known: 1% inspiration, 99% transpiration). As an example they referred to one of the famous works of Picasso " Les Demoisselles d'Avignon" that was conceived after a large number of studies. It was fun to see those studies in the exhibition (some were rather basic drawings in a lined notebook). My son discovered that one of his favourite modern artists work is influenced by certain work of Picasso and thus not so original as he thought. And that it's okay to copy to learn and be influenced by why you see in other work. What did I take away? To let go, to break with the rules, not be afraid that it won't work will help to create something new.
Tasks
I had a difficult time answering the questions of the first two tasks and in general concerning art. I think I'm not the 'targeted' person for this book, to be honest. I like to enlarge my creativity, but mainly in quilting, and I don't have a (secret) wish to venture into art. I get enough from this book and the exercises so it's not a problem, but sometimes I just don't have an answer (unless it is buried so deep inside me that I even haven't seen a glimpse of it LOL).
Weekly Walk
You know what? I completely forgot!
Abonneren op:
Reacties posten (Atom)
5 opmerkingen:
I had similar problems with the questions this week, for similar reasons. But it's interesting all the other things that were dredged up. I think it's neat how this work is influencing your influence on your son. The Picasso exhibit sounds fabulous!
How interesting to be going through these exercises while watching your son develop as an artist. I liked your modification to the Morning Pages to make them work for you.
The art exhibit sounds great, I wish we had a museum close enough to make that a possibility. Unfortunately the local art museum doensn't have anything of interest to me at this time.
I think you are on the right track with your son (speaking as a parent!). I know that if you do what you love the money will follow sounds wonderful, but the pessimist in me says what do they have to do in the meantime to eat?
Thanks for your responses. It is indeed to go through this book while my son is doing it his way (he thinks books about how to do it are silly LOL). His father is an artist and succesfull in his field. This was always a bit intimidating as achild for him because people always made him feel he should/would follow in his footsteps. I'm happy he's found his own talent and has such a deep rooted feeling about what he needs to become and how. I've had my doubts (never voiced them!) but after taking in so much as a sponge the past year (without producing) he's started to draw and paint and it's so much fun to watch his progress.
Your discoveries in the museum really rang true for me. I always thought artists were brilliant from birth. Turns out they practice, and throw away bad attempts, and ponder, and redo. Me, too. What I got from this week is, 'Own your art, even if quilting'
Een reactie posten