Everybody copies from everybody else and these are the pieces to the puzzle. It becomes more interesting when one looks at what comes out from all the juggling. and inspiration and copying can so often meet at the same crossroads.
The puzzle metaphor lands for me. In black and white work, you're constantly borrowing compositions that thousands of photographers have already framed, but the tonal choices, the weight you give the shadows, those are yours. Copying the structure isn't the same as copying the seeing.
Yes and also there is so much format that one can draw from that makes construction interesting despite the ideology by some people believe that art must be social. Social so often to me connotates linear, repetitive and non creative while I firmly know that a canvas can stand on aesthetics alone if one has the courage to explore. nice hearing from you or connecting ...........
That crossroads idea really resonates. When I started painting café scenes from my travels, I kept worrying that every little doorway or window composition had already been done a thousand times. Eventually I realized the juggling you're describing is exactly what makes each version feel different. Same subject, but the piece of yourself you bring to it changes everything.
Yes
you have to wait be patient to find that element that gives you the next clue.
It may drive you crazy but when you find it its like a giant exhale. Its like magic and the fun you had when but a child whence you could be curious about everything
The difference is between learning and copying. To learn, one must copy. To create, one must forget what one copied.
Yes and we should never be fearful of forgetting because in forgetting is the seed of remembering even if its face reads symbolically.
Fear of the InexplicableBut fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Thank you! One of the things that I like about artists in general is their bravery in the face of the emptiness, the 'new, unforeseeable' that is filled with possibility: whether it's a stage, a concert hall or piece of paper.
As for Rilke: it's time I filled that big hole in my reading!
Tom Thanks,
I see art as a craft and in my case I do not know how brave I am perhaps so? Nevertheless I also think that artistic endeavors rather have more so been a refuge for me away from the mechanistic staleness in an environment of commands and little of anything else. Where is the fun the liberty adventure, discovery in commandments that are based on taking away ones freedom? Art is a rebellion against the "emptiness" of authority for authorities sake. But do I agree that "real artists" may be brave yes but that " real artists" also do what they do from the bowels of there very nature and so out of necessity as well. To me being an artist is not only the production of visible works but also a positioning of an individuals being in contradistinction to his or her conventional social mores and within that persons whole life a positioning of his or her being into a style of rebellion against dogma.
I mention Rilke as an example of a real artist- a protester. I think what counts is that you me and many others have a kinship to him to the point where we might produce interesting art. In respect to this I wish you liberation- the best that life can offer. I for one look to commune with the bountifulness of nature.
Joseph B.