…the important point here is not that you have—or don’t have—what other artists have, but rather that it doesn’t matter. whatever they have is something needed to do their work—it wouldn’t help you in your work even if you had it. their magic is theirs. you don’t lack it. you don’t need it. it has nothing to do with you. period.
Art and Fear via MULL IT OVER.
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Ah, a wonderful quote from one of my favorite books on the artistic process.
Art & Fear.
My photography students often (close to always is more accurate) ask me questions about ‘which gear (brand) is best. My response is … “if I give you Roger Federer’s tennis racquet you will not magically become a tennis champion”. I also remind them Picasso didn’t have better brushes then the other artists.
I do however, encourage them to study the masters but find their own voice.
Some days this blog is extra good. I really appreciate that. Thanks!
I’m convinced that we could do away with almost all these sorts of posts and quotes if everyone would just go out and get a copy of Emerson’s Self Reliance.
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. ”
The language is a little different, but the sentiment is always the same,
Or better yet, to the source itself, the Bhagavad Gita (and in particular, Karma Yoga).
The only way any of the influential tombs of the past decade or two will help the reader is if they really read. I my experience there is very little reading happening. The patience doesn’t exist, so a impression is not created and leave the hopes for change is like wisps of smoke from a candle recently extinguished.
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