mcauleyhouseartists: Make Do & Break Out

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Make Do & Break Out

Make do....While looking for inspiration for another project I came across two old quilt tops that were given to me by a 90 year old patient over 30 years ago. The quilts were made by her mother over 100 years ago. The patient's mother worked as a housekeeper for a family that owned a clothing store. The store owner would bring home scraps of fabric in a bag and give them to the housekeeper. The patient remembered her mother digging through her bags of donated scraps and pulling out pieces of fabrics designed for shirts, sheets, dresses, pants, etc. The patient said her mother had no prior quilting experience, "she would just start sewing all these pieces together."
As artists we sometimes feel we just don't have the right supplies, the right color, canvas, paper, etc. I know I get caught up in that thinking. However- buying something new- the perfect item we thought we needed isn't all we imagined it to be. It's that moment of realization that true creativity is what sustains us not the things we own when it comes to being an artist.

Break Out..... It's rare for us to have large canvas to paint on. However today was our lucky day! But- going back to Make Do- Linda was late and missed out on a canvas- but being the artist that she is- she glued three pieces of paper/canvas together so she too would have a large structure to paint on.
The artists really went to work on their paintings enjoying every minute of it !

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.