Creative bravery
August 18, 2008 by cynthia
Art takes courage. I find that fascinating (also scary).
I’m not talking about the courage it takes to put your work out there, live through rejection and put it out again, although that takes plenty of guts. But rejection’s a given in my dayjob, and like most writers I’ve built up armor against it: You don’t fall in love with your own words in the first place, so you can stay objective when an editor carves them up. (Note to Susan who patiently listened to my screeching as she edited my humor columns: Yeah, yeah…but that was different, a matter of flow and timing, not love! 
)
I gotta admit that it cuts closer to the bone when my art is rejected so maybe I’m not all THAT objective. But what I’m really talking about here is the courage to create art in the first place, which for some reason I’m finding particularly terrifying right now.
It takes guts to get the first mark on the paper (or the first blob of clay in a freshly planed surface). Guts to leave the model you’re slavishly copying and work instead from your head (or maybe your heart). You need courage to tear out what’s almost right and start over even though there’s no guarantee the next version will be better. To know when to keep going and (more important) when to stop. To take a now-perfect clay model and destroy it with plaster or silicon.
It’s hard to trust yourself, to trust instinct. To get past the idea that there oughta be an Undo button for clay and frit and instead work without a safety net. (In this respect, computers have a LOT to answer for; I’ll bet Rodin never worried about an Undo button.)
Boiled down, it means to finally understand in my bones that I can control this, and that the best stuff happens when I’m having fun.
But it’s weeks like this that I really wonder if I’m brave enough, which is why the guy in my current project (above) is no longer zennishly calm but looks instead as if he’s had the beejaysus scared out of him. Dammit. I’m not channeling my art, my art is channeling me, and I need to smack it upside the head and finish this thing so I can invest it, get it into the kiln and move on.
In other words, Cynthia, geeeeeeez. Lighten up.
Related posts:
- Creative process, part II (BoyBubbles) WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG (AND SELF-INDULGENT) POST (yeah, she’s doing it...
- Creative process, part I Spent hours at GAS (the Glass Art Society conference) last month asking...
- Molding May To the left you see one of the sculptures I'm...
- The sculpture that wouldn’t die. Part III. Period. OK, so where are we? Oh yeah. At the end...
Cynthia…
That sculpting goes the teh win. Scary good. What are you thinking of for the glass?
GcB
Geez… what a dork.
That sculpting goes FOR teh win. Proofread? Who needs to stinking proof raed?
GcB
Thanks (although I’m looking at that photo now and thinking I need to fix that area under the left eye…). It’s of a colleague at work and both model and coworkers have been offering all kinds of suggestions (“you know, the bump on the end of my nose is a little bit bigger and rounder–just add a little more clay…”). On Friday the subject offered to come to the studio, bring his wife (“she knows how I look better than I”) and a bottle of wine so he could sit for hours with his hand on his head while I finished up. At least if this one doesn’t go anywhere I know I’ve got a ready taker!
I am finding that I prefer live models to photographs–much less estimating. I am a little concerned that this looks TOO much like the guy in question, too much like an illustration, but I’m having so much fun with it I don’t care. Yet.
The colors are bugging me. I’d originally planned for night colors, i.e., purples and dark blues, maybe a combination of lavender and skyish blue on the face itself. Now there’s too much tension in the face and hand for that kind of serene, monochrome palette. The face needs a shocking, complementary color that vibrates off the background. Probably stick with midnight colors in the background, but shoot for a hot, shadowed orange on the face and hand, something like that. This whole Vignettes series looks like graphic novels, anyway, so it’d fit right in.
But again–the color choice is another one of those bravery problems and as this guy is about 18 inches tall (something like 2.5x lifesize) this is a LOT of color. Be interesting to see if I chicken out at the last moment and go back to safe and creamy neutrals.
Hey, Cynthia, greetings from Sawbones Susan! Nephew Chris’s wedding is Nov. 8 in Salem–want a visitor?
Absolutely! C’maaaan down (or up or over or whatever it is), make some extra time and we’ll do stuff. Got about three dozen restaurants that need trying, if nothing else…
Sawbones Susan?!! Think I might need courage to meet you – let alone the fear of creating…
Trusting your instinct is HARD! I can happily potter about with tests, progressing with ideas etc, but when faced with beginning the actual piece, like I am now with two projects I’m working on, my nerve fails me and I keep avoiding my studio like the plague.
Are my designs any good? Does the glass process I’ve chosen express the essence of the original designs? Isn’t it all just tacky rubbish? Shouldn’t I get a job in Ikea?That’s the script I battle with at this point…
I find trotting along to other artists, trusted friends and my partner with handfuls of samples invaluable at this time; they can give a perspective that has sadly abandoned me – and help me gather the courage to move on to the next stage.
Good luck with your man Cynthia – he looks like he’s just found out Michael Phelps has chosen his discipline for 2012!
“Sawbones,” for the non-US-grown, is old Wild West slang for “surgeon…”
I do get a lot from comparing versions with others, especially family because they’re generally pretty honest. My mother especially–we trade photos via e-mail and I’ll get a lot of “the nose is too broad at the base” kinda stuff from her.
In this particular case, as I said, the model has taken a very proprietary attitude toward this work and is doing his best to make sure it’s accurate…I’m sometimes tempted to give him a mustache, or maybe a third eye, just to see his reaction.
I too find that first push the hardest. I can draw, swap colors around, change shapes, research books etc for ages, and avoid the shed like its dissappeared. Like Milly I trot around to other artists and galleries, but don’t talk about my current plans. Like visiting rele’s thay usually want to pull me away from anything out of the ordinary. I don’t believe photo realism will ever portray or produce emotion as much as an artists instinct. That face is wonderful and has a subtlety that means the expression will develop with the viewers attention, and change a lot with different light and angles of viewing.Will you display him at eye level? Art is scary OK but when you venture into such a human realm its very very scary. Remember Pygmalion and Galatea.
Peter.
Peter, thanks for the compliment and yes, he does seem to morph expressions as you view him at different angles. I generally intend the Vignettes to be displayed at just below eye level, but so far–unless I supervise the display–everyone else puts them about 6-10 inches above, so that I’m looking up their nostrils. It’s taught me to make sure I get the underparts (nostrils, chin, underbrow, etc.) right, anyway.