Imagination has a cost.
It's Friday and it has not been an unproductive week. I've accomplished a few things and, I think, most importantly, I've tumbled to the (self evident) concept that what I've been doing, in terms of painting, is not creative, not imaginative. not expressive. It is a good starting to becoming a talented copyist. In other words, so far I've been practicing making oil copies of photographs.
The results are pleasant and when I display them on a place like Facebook, people say they like them and they do. If I had put the original photos up they would have liked them as well. Perhaps more so because they were much better representations of the scenes. But the people see that I've copied a photograph and internally they do a quick calculation on how much work that is and then they consider how long it would take them to accomplish the same thing and that swings the scales further in my direction and I automatically get the big "E" for effort.
That's all natural, but all that means that it's partly about what pictures I pick out and I really really do like the affirmations so I pick out the pictures that the most people will like. That give me the best chance of getting my Attaboys. What I learn along the way, in terms of the technical aspects of painting, the painterly skills, are just a way for me to sharpen my people pleasing chances.
All this is to say that unless I'm expressing something from myself, I'm not doing art. The problem with that is that I don't know what to express from myself, or more like, how to express something through the medium of paint. I need to start with some feeling of my own, or thought that I want to express. The key word here is expression. Anger, danger, fear, hope, awe, something and then think of a way to show it with paint.
Or... maybe I'm starting to high up the chain. Perhaps I need to start by focusing on a feeling and try to express it in Corel Painter. Then, if I'm at all successful, I try to move it to real paint.
Of course, first comes the feeling, the thought, then comes the expression.
So deep, so circular and meaningless. I need to lean into the resistant gel and make an effort. I listened to a podcast this morning about creativity and everyone that spoke of it, spoke in terms of problem-solving. At least as a means of measuring it. I still see a difference between the two.
I moved a few paintings around in the house. Notably, I put the two lesser sunflowers into the bathrooms. I hung the vegetable platter above the kitchen sink. Curation may be my greatest strength. That's a joke, in case you're wondering.
By the end of yesterday, I had decided that I would take a day off of the effort to paint something creative. Mostly because I was stung by the lack of approval on Facebook for the two POS's I posted yesterday. But now I'm thinking, that was good. I need to post them all, but I need to get used to not getting the Attaboys. Sooner or later, I'll figure out what I'm doing and someone out there will figure it out as well.
More later,
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| Creativity at Work |
That's all natural, but all that means that it's partly about what pictures I pick out and I really really do like the affirmations so I pick out the pictures that the most people will like. That give me the best chance of getting my Attaboys. What I learn along the way, in terms of the technical aspects of painting, the painterly skills, are just a way for me to sharpen my people pleasing chances.
All this is to say that unless I'm expressing something from myself, I'm not doing art. The problem with that is that I don't know what to express from myself, or more like, how to express something through the medium of paint. I need to start with some feeling of my own, or thought that I want to express. The key word here is expression. Anger, danger, fear, hope, awe, something and then think of a way to show it with paint.
Or... maybe I'm starting to high up the chain. Perhaps I need to start by focusing on a feeling and try to express it in Corel Painter. Then, if I'm at all successful, I try to move it to real paint.
Of course, first comes the feeling, the thought, then comes the expression.
So deep, so circular and meaningless. I need to lean into the resistant gel and make an effort. I listened to a podcast this morning about creativity and everyone that spoke of it, spoke in terms of problem-solving. At least as a means of measuring it. I still see a difference between the two.
I moved a few paintings around in the house. Notably, I put the two lesser sunflowers into the bathrooms. I hung the vegetable platter above the kitchen sink. Curation may be my greatest strength. That's a joke, in case you're wondering.
By the end of yesterday, I had decided that I would take a day off of the effort to paint something creative. Mostly because I was stung by the lack of approval on Facebook for the two POS's I posted yesterday. But now I'm thinking, that was good. I need to post them all, but I need to get used to not getting the Attaboys. Sooner or later, I'll figure out what I'm doing and someone out there will figure it out as well.
More later,
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