"The biggest force within an artist is this restlessness for the work that lies just over the lip of consciousness." -Jim Harrison
words are slow in coming today. they are stuck to the hard surface of the white glue whose container I left open yesterday after doing some collages.
alas. there should be a word for the feeling of disappointment you get when you realize you left your glue open, or that you forgot to clean a paintbrush and it is now a dry hardened lump. happens quite a bit in my world.
how is it that an artist can never seem to create the things that exists in one's head? As Harrison suggests this is the very thing that urges us on. This thing that we are reaching towards every day. I liken it to an aphasia of sorts, I feel like I know what I want to say yet I can't find the words (or in the case of painting, the imagery). I suppose this is something we must get used to, this inability to say exactly what we want with a work. It feels like it is right there sitting beyond the reach of my outstretched fingers.
And instead of feeling frustrated I will try to be grateful for it. It is the thing that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. To try again.
I wake up, I make a painting.
I try to make it look like what I see in my head. It doesn't. so I mess with it a bit more.
Sometimes I like it, sometimes not. If i like it i feel like the greatest artist in the world, brilliant and powerful. If not I feel like a hack, a failure, a fraud, that I should just quit now and leave it to others who have real talent.
I go for walks and read and eat. Sleep.
I wake up and try it all again.
The beauty is in that restlessness.
Posted by kerismith at April 04, 2005 11:32 AMI've had difficulty expressing my visions since I was a small child. I can remember playing with clay in nursery school. I always tried to sculpt a giraffe, yet I couldn't make the clay look like what I could see in my mind, so I always ended up pounding the clay flat and making an ashtray.
Artistic frustration at the age of 4. And it continues almost 40 years later, but I persist.
Posted by: Terry on April 5, 2005 10:12 AMKeri, you're writing reminds me that many of us are compelled (sometimes against our will) to create things whether a painting, a drawing, a journal entry, a story. For some folks it's kin to breathing. One has to do it regardless of the outcome.
Posted by: Paige on April 5, 2005 10:07 AMLife has a funny way of being beautiful sometimes doesn't it?!
Posted by: Claire on April 4, 2005 06:03 PMIs it fixed?
Posted by: Keri Smith on April 4, 2005 05:58 PMThe image today that you posted isn't opening for me either. I think theres a problem with it somewhere. I'd love to see it when its fixed! I really liked today's post. You keep the artist in me alive these days.
Posted by: A on April 4, 2005 05:51 PMI wish I could see your artwork. For some reason it is not coming up on my screen - unless that is your point of the story and the blank images above.
I love your will and your ability to see the opportunity in which some would find frustrating!!
Posted by: Jen on April 4, 2005 05:35 PMat least you are trying. i can come back to something i haven't touched in months, sometimes years, and wonder why i didn't keep at it or what went wrong. persistance is k-e-y.
Posted by: yonni on April 4, 2005 03:38 PMI know the feeling you are describing all too well. My poetry is difficult right now, so I'm working on a short story instead, and it is resolutely defying my wishes. Or at least that's how it feels this week.
Posted by: schmutzie on April 4, 2005 02:53 PMmmmmmmmmmmmmm, that feeling is so common to me, trying to free my mind from that niggling image by writing by art by speaking that image out.
Posted by: joy madison on April 4, 2005 02:25 PMThank you !! that post is just what I needed today!!!
Posted by: natascha on April 4, 2005 02:24 PMTo quote Sigmund Freud, "From error to error, one discovers the entire truth."
There is something to be learned in the repetition.
Posted by: you know who on April 4, 2005 01:05 PM