Passion as Purpose

"...having passion is just understanding what your purpose in life is." 
-- Dan McLaughlin

I came across this video today about this guy Dan who quit his job to prove that one can master any skill if they put in the requisite time, ie. 10,000 hours.  I remember reading about this 10,000 hour milestone to mastery in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers", and I remember finding the idea reassuring after I crazily quit my lucrative job as a lawyer to try to be an artist.  If I just put in the time, it must be possible.  10,000 hours?  Then here goes nothing.

Well, it appears this guy Dan is documenting every hour of his efforts to master golf in a project called "The Dan Plan".  Perhaps I should have had more foresight and documented "The Amanda Plan" back at the beginning when I first quit my job.  And isn't the progression of learning art more interesting than learning golf?  I'm just saying.  Anyway, I relate to his story a lot, and I hope that his hypothesis that anyone can do anything if they just put in the time is true (for him as well as for me).  Although I sense a few glitches in his theory (everything doesn't just boil down to skill, does it?).

At the end of this video, the interviewer asks Dan whether the passion required to be so driven and focused so as to spend 10,000 hours on one endeavor might just be genetic.  I love his response:  
"How do you prove whether or not someone is born with passion?  I mean is that an innate ability or something that's actually, just for some unknown reason, some people are born with passion and some people are just passionless?  I don't really agree with that.  I think that as long as anybody finds whatever it is in life that they really love then they'll become obsessed and they'll just want to do that and nothing will get in their way.  So, perhaps having passion is just understanding what your purpose in life is."

Palette Madness

The palette of 165 colors I mixed in my studio yesterday.


As you can see, I have a new background image on my blog (and on my Twitter page too).  I've been hating how boring all this white white white is, so I spent yesterday mixing a zillion colors and filling my palette with dollops of paint.  I started out with a less ambitious plan in mind, just wanting to mix a few interesting colors that I could photograph, but as I started to see all those perfect drops of pureed color accumulate on the palette, I just had to keep going until it was at over-capacity.  In the end, I mixed 165 colors (yes, that's right 165 -- 11 x 15 rows!!!), and I was adamant with myself that no two colors could be the same.  They were all mixed from a basic palette of about five blues, three reds, three yellows, two whites and one green, mixed and mixed and mixed for hours on end.  Needless to say, the last 60 colors or so were a little challenging to make identifiably unique, but trust me, I didn't cheat!!  A little OCD, I admit.  A weird obsessive tangent in my studio practice.  But it became like a fun, sadistic, creative game that I had to finish.  And lucky for me, I now have a palette stuffed with paint -- and several blank canvases await...

NOTE:  For all the painters out there, my basic palette consisted of the following:

Blues:  Cobalt, Ultramarine, Manganese, Cerulean, and Old Holland (and yes, that's a color by the brand of the same name).

Reds:  Quinacridone Rose, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red Light

Yellows:  Hansa Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Light, Brilliant Yellow (another weird Old Holland brand color that I've recently started using)

Green:  Permanent Green Light (Graham brand)

White:  Zinc and Titanium

Failure or Freedom

I couldn't do it.  I just couldn't come up with a final composition for my show.  I loved the idea of the symmetry of having three different paintings for each of three images.  I'm sure no one will care that the third image only has two painted interpretations, but for me it has felt like a failure that I couldn't come up with anything interesting enough to paint.  I came up with a lot of good compositions, but nothing that really said anything different than what I've already said.  It felt redundant, just another painting.  It felt like failure.

But after consulting with my gallerist (the unflappable Powell MacDougall), I was reassured that I had plenty of work for the show and to simply complete and perfect the works that were already in progress.  I began to think of all the things I could do without the burden of that one final painting to paint -- and suddenly I felt liberated.  I felt like a creative person again.  I realized how much that one painting was just feeling like product and not like art.  I didn't have the time to thoughtfully resolve a new compositional structure, so I was just trying to make a nice, reasonable painting to round out the show.  Ugh.  Terrible, soul-destroying motivation.

The first day after this decision, waiting for wet paintings to dry, I started playing with some old ideas that I haven't had time to revisit and explore.  In just a few hours, I felt on the verge of a new breakthrough. Instead of feeling the weight of having to execute an endless number of new paintings to meet painfully stressful deadlines, I felt excited, inspired, awake and rejuvenated.  I was an artist again, not just a painting machine.  And I might even have time to work this new idea into the show.  Now THAT''s exciting.

I know there is always going to be pressure to create work to fill shows on tight deadlines (at least I hope there will always be that pressure!), but now I realize how important it is for me to make sure I find a way to leave myself some breathing room -- some time to play, to ponder, to experiment.

I'm really proud of the works that will be on display at my show.  That final, failed, unpainted painting will not be missed.

All is Fair


"The only good thing you can say about an artist
is that they work hard."
-- Agnes Martin

I wanted to write about the art fair this week, provide some thoughtful feedback on the odd experience of both participating in and visiting an art fair as an artist (and it is unquestionably an odd experience).  But my mind is too focused on all the studio work that remains to be done before my show opens in just a few short weeks.  There is no time for reflection. 

"Split Screen", oil on canvas, 36" x 50", Amanda Clyne 2011


The fact is, I am struggling to resolve the final works for my show.  It was great to have my paintings displayed at Art Toronto, and there is no question that it was an opportunity to have more people see my work than would ever attend my exhibition at a gallery.  But I fear my show will seem woefully anticlimactic, since so many of my new paintings were just exhibited at the fair.  A few more paintings seem unavoidably necessary.

So I have been working frantically to complete a new series of three paintings, all derived from a new image.  The first painting is a little strange, but romantic and ethereal -- a mix of very wide and very narrow fragments that reads quite differently from my other works.  The second is a large close-up portrait, full of complex subtleties of tone and color, and although I am only half done, I should be able to complete it on time.  But it is the third one that is proving to be the killer.  I just can't seem to decide on the final composition.  I keep creating new possibilities, but am never quite satisfied.  I've come close a couple of times, even going so far as to build stretchers for certain compositions, but I just can't seem to bring myself to paint them.  

And I am running out of time.  The show feels lopsided without this elusive third work, so somehow I must come to a decision and begin painting.  But whenever I hear that voice in my head nagging me with doubt, I recoil and reluctantly force myself to start again.  I'm fighting for that moment when I look at the composition on my computer screen and I just can't wait to see it come alive in paint.  I'm fighting hard for this last one.  I better find the answer soon.


Mamma Mia!!!!

How much do I love Italy?  There are almost no words.  Just to see my work presented on the same page with the galloping, vowel-filled Italian language is simply heaven.  I have had the kindest responses from readers of the story in Italy, and I admit I spent much of the day yesterday speaking to my new roommate in my best Italian accent (all words sound better and more joyful with an Italian accent, don't you think?  Perhaps actual Italian lessons are in order).  After so many months of solitude in the studio, to have such a warm response to my work is so encouraging.  Hopefully this is a good omen for the reception of my work at this weekend's international art fair in Toronto.  Amo l'Italia!!!

A story about my work by Michele Caporosso for the Italian newspaper L'Espresso
October 25, 2011.

A Weird and Glorious Beast

This is a gorgeous review of my work recently posted on the amazing Flavorwire blog.  (Thank you Emily Temple!)


It comes just a day after I received coverage on the Artist A Day blog, which inspired a number of supportive comments:

 

It has been heartening to receive so much coverage lately by the blogosphere.  All I want is for people to see the work and for the work to find its audience.  But building an audience online is a strange process that often feels more like an old-fashioned popularity contest than a meaningful exchange of art and ideas.  It's so easy to become self-conscious about how many "fans" Like your facebook page, how many "friends" will comment on your posts (on blogs, Facebook, Google+, or seemingly endless new networks that I can't keep track of), how many followers you have on Twitter, or how many times your work is re-tweeted.  Some sites even rank which artists are most "popular" on their sites.   It is a never-ending tally of statistics and quantitative data that measures every eyeball that lands on your work, and publicizes every response (or lack thereof), grading your significance or "success".

Lately I have been struck by how much art seems to be merging with entertainment.  Galleries and museums compete with entertainment venues for their audience, and instant audience feedback is courted as a critical element to the "interactive" experience.  But this call for ranking and spontaneous judgement of work seems more suited to entertainment than art.  Is the painting a thumbs up or a thumbs down?  Should the work be given 5 stars or just 3?  Did you like it?  Did you have fun?  Throughout history, it has not always been the most popular artists who are the most significant or important.  Can the artist ranked #954th still find its way into history?  And is the #1 artist really "the best"?  Just because you don't "like" it, is not worth looking at again?

I admit that the thoughtful review of my work on Flavorwire and the longer comments posted on the Artist A Day blog are encouraging.  They indicate a real engagement by the digital crowd with the work, and as long as the comments are thoughtful and interesting, I love the feedback, good or bad.  I just hope art can sustain its place in the world as something to contemplate, to experience and to debate, and not just a momentary distraction to glance at, rank, and forget.

Learning to Paint

Yesterday I was invited into a fourth year painting class at OCAD University to critique the students' work.  At the end of the class, one of the students asked (and I paraphrase), "What's the best way to learn to paint?".  I remember so clearly how I felt at school, desperately wanting someone - anyone! - to just tell me how to paint.  There seemed to be so many talented painters, so many with much greater skill than I had, and I wanted that elusive, mythical manual I was sure existed somewhere that would give me the rules, the lessons, the definitive steps to becoming a great painter.  It took me four years of art college to finally realize that no one can teach you how to paint.

Admittedly, there are a few technical matters when it comes to materials, but remarkably few, and really, the only way to learn to paint is to PAINT.  Someone can teach you how THEY paint, but you'll never figure out how YOU paint, unless you, well, paint and paint and paint and paint.  So often a painter's work is interesting simply because of the way they apply the paint -- a unique way, that they figured out themselves.

The most helpful advice I have learned so far can be boiled down to a few points:

1.  Experiment with a full range of different media.  Some media just doesn't suit your hand, your vision, your natural pace.  You need to find a medium and process that suits you, and no one can figure that out for you. (Acrylic paint seemed to be most people's choice at my art school, and I fought with it for years, until I finally tried oil paint one day and became a better painter overnight.)

2.  Experiment with a range of applications.  A great way to start is to try to copy some of your favorites.  I read a great interview with Elizabeth Murray in her MOMA retrospective catalogue in which she describes how trying to copy a de Kooning painting taught her how to paint. 

3.  Take risks.  Push a painting beyond where you think it can go, beyond what feels comfortable to you.  Instead of being scared you'll "ruin it", commit to resolving it at all costs.  The painting will take unexpected turns and leave you with something that you had no intention of creating at the beginning.  Even if it's just one moment of that process that is worth storing in your arsenal at the end (and I can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one thing that's a keeper), it will have been worthwhile.  And no teacher will have been able to figure out that thing for you.

My final words of encouragement to the student was to not be intimidated or discouraged by the more skillful painters in her class.  There are lots of skilled painters out there who have nothing interesting to say.  If you have something to say, I really believe the skill will come through the sheer desire to say it.


Daily Interest


"I would feel very badly for someone who is so boring that they can't go to a coffee shop once a day and for two minutes say something that is interesting." - Seth Godin

This blog post by Seth Godin has got me inspired to post daily blogs again. And I think his point on having something interesting to say each day applies just as much to visual artists as to writers.  Create a new image a day?