"There is no line where art stops and life begins"  -Charles Eames

On Saturday mornings in the summer I don my favourite green straw hat, get on my Italian folding touring bike with a wicker basket on the front, (formerly my mom's bike it is now my prize possession), and I head off to the local farmer's market.  It is a relaxing journey, mostly downhill, and I coast happily to retrieve locally grown produce, herbs, trout, or wool.  I wander through the small selection of booths waving to the regulars, stopping to chat about the weather, share valuable gardening tips, or explain where I was last weekend.  

On this particular Saturday I spot a modest table with four or five "bouquets" of wildflowers in glass jars.  I stop immediately, transfixed at the beauty of these small treasures, intricate little bundles filled with cosmos, lupines, and many others that have been lovingly assembled with a careful eye.  The combination of colours is stunning, blues, purples, pinks, whites, yellows.  The girl seems puzzled at my immediate joy in her arrangements.  I tell her I will come by on my way out to purchase a bundle, I don't want them to wilt while I browse.  She has apparently assembled these flowers from her own garden, and seems unaware of their charms.  Later while enjoying my bouquet at home (purchased for a meager $3.00), I think to myself, "this is art".  It seems something that appears natural to her, without much effort or talent.  She is surprised when someone will pay for it.  This is the nature of "honest" art.  Something that arises out of everyday life, it is the artist that captures it in a somewhat naive way.

I begin to contemplate "what it means to make art".  I've come to some new conclusions.  Namely, your life is your art.  That which you do naturally, every day, is your greatest "source".  Charles and Rae Eames in their teachings discussed the importance of using sources.  You cannot create art without a source, but the nature of what makes a good source is sometimes illusive to the maker.  Look to your daily life.  The things you do every day without thinking.  A walk in your neighborhood.  A phone conversation.   Your childhood obsessions.  A new purse.  The normal parts.  The "boring" parts.  Your favourite cup.  A hole in your shoe.  What's in your knapsack.  What you ate for lunch.  Include the ugly parts which we often discard as sources. The mess on your desk.  A painful childhood memory.  A nagging fear.  A terrible fight.  A death.  Use these as elements in your opus.    Write them down.  Paint them out.  transform them.  change their meaning.  It is all worthy of documenting.  Your view of the world is unique.  people will respond to your work when it is honest.  even though you might not see the beauty there.  sometimes that is better.  just get it out.  start by talking about what you did yesterday.  actually, just start.  to add my favourite saying, 
use what you've got!  (I actually got this from the Urban Peasant (James Barber) who applied it to cooking, but it works for everything.)

exercise:  close your eyes for a moment.  when you open them, start writing about the first thing you see.  Try to look at it as if it was the first time.  Look only at the bottom half of it.  Start a dialogue about only the bottom half.  
 

Keri Smith is a free-lance illustrator and native of Toronto.  A graduate of  O.C.A. she has a wide following of clients in North America and Japan.  She currently resides in a “magic” cottage in Flesherton, painting, illustrating, creating, writing, and living out loud.  Her first children's books, entitled Story in a Box have just been published by Chronicle Books.
 

back