mcauleyhouseartists: The Joy of Creating

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Joy of Creating

Donna's Dolls

I recently spent time with Donna asking her a few questions about her creative process. It turns out that Donna is not only a natural at making dolls, but also sews, crochets, paints, and makes jewelry. The dolls have already been seen by a few of her friends as well as traded for paintings. Congratulations Donna !

Mike

Many of the artists (if not all) in our group are multi-talented. Michael is not only a precise and careful painter, but a workhorse in the yard. Honestly, I've never seen someone clean a yard so thoroughly and so quickly !

Ronald Reeves

Ron is another artist that is not only an amazing painter, but also teaches art at the VA Hospital in Providence. The photo above is of the painting he finished this week.

Congratulations to ALL of the artists and all that you do that brings joy to so many. There will be more posts about the individual artists as they prepare for the annual art show in February. KK

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.

Art is Our Voice

Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Joy of Creating