As the season changes from fall to winter and art buying changes from "collecting" to gift shopping, what are you doing? Filling up your schedule with shows because that is how you have always done it?
Or will you use this seasonal change to stop and reconsider and think about creating something you've always wanted to create rather than filling the show boxes with "product?" The challenge is to make our lives meaningful. The greatest gift of being an artist is to exhibit creativity in all facets of our lives.
Photo from the HuffingtonPost.com.
Comments
I was thinking the same thing, Barbara...who's more prolific than Ms.Oates? I think ideas and inspiration come in waves and it doesn't really matter what you're doing or how hard you're working. As artists, we never know where the creative process will lead us but I think we're all sort of worried about having too much "lag" time, at least I know I am. I can't wait to get home and start a new project and yes, I'm usually thinking about the next one while finishing up the current one...it's what keeps me going. If I were to take time off from "creating", I would love to travel, as that always fills me up...who can afford it though? In the meantime, maybe a trip to an art museum or gallery...
That is too cool...I'll look it up.
"The Mulvaneys" was so heartbreaking. I don't want to ever read that book again. Most recently I read "The Tattooed Girl", great story with interesting psychological twists and turns.
My son has published 3 books. He writes about ways ordinary people can make money online and has taught me a lot. His most recent book is Click Millionaires -- available just about anywhere, but, of course, on Amazon.
Haven't read Oates since I read "Blond", I remember reading "Ordinary People" a while back too, but I should read it again because I'm getting older and well, I can't remember the plot. I do love her work, such clarity no matter the subject. You make me want to read her again. By the way, your son published a book-that's huge. What is it about and where can we get it.
What you can say about Oates though is that she doesn't do the same thing over and over. When I read her books I don't hear the "Oates voice." Each one plows new ground and examines a new idea, although most of the ones I have read have ordinary people acting in strange ways. I'm thinking that by continually changing her focus, maybe that is how she finds her creative impulse.
Margaret, thanks for the Willa Cather moment. I have always loved her. I love how you express yourself. Our dance with our "great love" isn't always Fred and Ginger, sometimes stumbling and frustrating, but always the thing we can't live without.
Well, it is a good sounding quote to get one thinking. But I don't think that it applies to me, either, as when I'm in my studio, I am normally not thinking about the pot that I am making, but on the next pot, and the next, pot, and the next, etc.
And, lately, yes,the thoughts have been on marketing, and what shows to do next year, and how to change all of my photos, and how to get some promoting done, and how to rearrange my studio, and.....well, you get the picture (smile).
Sometimes, though, it does seem that being presently busy does interfere with stopping, changing direction, and working on a few other things that need attention.
But, I think it is like, say, losing weight, or improving your health habits. One can go on about how they don't "have time to exercise, change their diet, etc," but, really, sometimes one needs to just STOP! and fix whatever it is...ok, I AM busy today, so I'm rambling, but does that make sense to anyone?
I think that most creative people don't need to actually stop to be creative, the thinking is always going on, always. It's the actual execution of new work that sometimes takes a back seat, though.
The idea of sitting back and spending time to contemplate the creative is a wonderful idea. But I find that the creative happens when I work everyday. It comes easier and the instincts kick in less laboriously. When I take a break, it takes me time to get back on track and I find that the flow doesn't "flow" as easy.
Willa Cather said, " Where there is great love there are always miracles. Miracles rest not so much on faces or voices or healing powers coming to us from afar off, but on our perceptions made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what there is around us always."
I have always loved this quote but I look at this from an artist's perspective (not a religious one,although you could).Those little things that make something great instead of good happen for me when I work everyday. It's a reveal, an epiphany, a just knowing what fits, and that doesn't happen as easily when, when I walk away for a long period of time to jell.
Of course, the caveat is that there is "great love"...not much money sometimes...but great love...isn't that why we do this in the long run? Granted the marketing majors will always do better financially than those of us who lead with out gut. But I have to believe that for most of us, this career is not done because we couldn't do anything else, but that there is a wellspring of passion that drives us into our studio's everyday. I know I must sound kind of 'pie in the sky" blinded. My life is just as up and down in this business as anybody else's on this blog, yet, this is what keeps me doing it.Those days when the creativity just seems to come out of my fingertips and the magic happens.
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