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“Without an unflinching sense of self, the work will ring hollow and will remain unconvincing.”
— Peter London, from “No More Secondhand Art: Awakening the Artist Within.”
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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about things like the above excerpt… As I begin to teach more often I’m finding that the concept of self-acceptance is a common theme that I keep coming back to with students: We are all unique, precious and DIFFERENT… accepting ourselves and understanding ourselves is so key to producing authentic work…
Writers often give the advice to “write like you talk.” I think it ties in well with the above in that how we talk is something we AUTOMATICALLY do, we don’t usually over think how we talk, and so it can be one fairly authentic window into who we are as individuals. And I realized with a jolt recently that my artwork is “how I talk” … Betsy (who I was speaking with at the time) laughed and agreed…
In conversations I tend to laugh a lot, make fun of myself, tease a bit, flit from one thought to another without transition (think roller coaster), delight in silliness, be outraged at things that waste my time (like TV-news, which I got a big dose of last week…oh my), suddenly feel the deeper emotion and/or spiritual concerns, etc.
These conversational characteristics come out in the form of fabric elephants and ponies, weirdish painted animals and sea monsters, sad faces, sweet girls, icon art like the one above, and the occasional snarky piece that I don’t usually share with you-all (but plan to more often, I promise!).
So… do YOU make art like you talk? If so or if not, tell!
