I'm surprised at some stuff I know but don't know I know until I'm talking to someone, or more often, emailing and commenting on blogs.
The latest is this: having dogged faith in your aesthetics and process and technique results in good art.
You know how we're always supposed to listen to criticisms, particularly ones we don't agree with straight away. I went to a convent school and had conservative (where child-rearing is concerned), so I was lucky to have criticisms galore. Even when grownups thought they were disguising them as encouragements. And I try to listen, though I find with my work, sometimes I need to shut them out, because I am a) too easily influenced and distracted, and b) haven't learned how to listen, consider and then ignore.
I learned yesterday that I knew artist friends I admire have faith in themselves, and make the "coming from within them" stuff. I don't know if they consider criticisms; at least one never does.
Sometimes it's gotta be good to be insular.
2 comments:
Yes, Meg, faith in oneself is a critical factor. Mine wavers at times, as I'm sure you know. But lately I've been embracing the fact that there are things -- bottom lines, if you will -- about my art that I can count on: my senses of color and design, that I can intuit what feels right when I'm making a piece, that my workmanship is excellent. Whatever is left in making art is the work of serendipity.
I know this about your work, Connie. I can "see" the conviction. Re. my stuff, however, I haven't gotten there yet. And because of the way I'm always looking around, perhaps too much, to pick up ideas and learn new things, I've come to wonder if I ever will get there. Perhaps one should deliberately go into hiding, once again. Like that chapter in "Artist's Way" where one is to give up reading for a week, but in this case, for longer.
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