Reaching for Greatness and Falling Short: The Bewildering Task of the Artist
On why we need mediocre art, how to survive this brutal world, what to do when the well runs dry, and keeping it simple. Plus, some inspiration for you and a weekly Wonder Spark.
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
I want to be able to write words of great beauty and heart and soul, words that matter, words that change people inside, words that uplift and shift, inspire and console and enlighten. And I’m not content with the words that I write.
Is anyone who ever strives for greatness in art—not outer recognition of greatness, but the inner beauty of art—ever satisfied? I don’t think so.
I don’t think it is given to us to be satisfied. It is given to us to strive. To reach and fall and fail and reach again. It’s hard, painful work. It’s largely thankless work for many of us, when you rarely get praise or financial reward or even much of an audience. And, more to the point, when you fall so far short of where you are aiming.
And you look with wonder and awe at those who succeed. And you feel sad, heartbroken, while also grateful to them. And still, you pick up your pen again. Because that’s what you do, that’s who you are, that’s what’s given to you to do.
“Fail, fail again, fail better.” — Samuel Beckett
It does feel, often, like beating your head against a wall over and over while you wait for some revelation that doesn’t come. But I believe so madly in the beauty and power and vital importance of art in all its forms. It is what makes my life.
I know it feels frustrating and futile and bewildering for many of us. And I know we need to keep doing it. It makes us better humans. It makes the world a better place, yes, even our mediocre attempts. Far better than all the mean, awful, or truly pointless things we could be doing with our precious time here on this difficult planet.
I don’t know why human life is set up to be so painful, so full of wrenching loss and suffering, hideous, torturous diseases, horrifying accidents, and far more horrifying wars and violence and greed. I don’t understand it, though I admit that it is through this suffering that we are often transformed into better versions of ourselves. But not always. Sometimes it just wrecks people.
So often, I feel lost in the great cavern of sadness and difficulty that is a human life. So often, I look up at the brilliant coral light on the clouds at sunset or gasp in awe at a symphony by Beethoven. So often, I wish I could hide from all other humans because it’s too hard to relate in any good, happy, real, and satisfying way. So often, I am deeply moved by a small act of tenderness between two people.
I wish it weren’t so hard. I wish I could make more astonishing works of art. I wish a lot of things. But here we are, muddling along as best we can. So, if we spend an afternoon or even fifteen minutes scribbling away at some fairly awful poem or putting some marks on a canvas or dancing in the open space of a room, isn’t that a pretty good way to spend our time?
So, I’ll share with you some of what I’ve been making this week and a few wonderful things I happened upon. I hope they bring some brightness to your day.
Weekly Wonders
I've made work for almost 20 years and I’m made a ton of work in that time. Some are ok, most “meh,” and a handful of good ones. The ok ones lead to the next pieces (and are a necessary part of the process) and the good ones sometimes come all at once and sometimes you have to grind them out slowly for a number of years to get one. It's equal parts mining for gold and standing in a field trying to get struck by lighting. Some days you dig and other days you look up and wait. —Matt Shlian
Astonishing Art: Check out these amazing works of art, made with paper, by Matt Shlian (quoted above).
Live Performance: We went to see Hair, the musical, last weekend in Sacramento with a group of friends. Wow. It was performed in the round. Great music and dancing, and great messages. It was wonderfully fun and quite moving. What was noteworthy in talking with my friends afterward was how many of us were grappling with challenging things in our lives and how we felt so uplifted and shifted by seeing the performance. Art is healing.
Inspiration: This artist is still painting, and enjoying life, at age 107! What I love most about her story is that, “The mother-of-five took up art when she turned 60 after she completed a two-year course at Rugby College and has a gallery set up in her garage, where she still sells her paintings.” It’s never too late to start.
Poetry: I stumbled on this lovely curated site of poetry. I highly recommend a browse through it.
From the Wonder Factory
Here are a few of my visual art experiments from the past week or so. I find myself very interested in composition, how the shapes relate to one another.
And a look at my art table this week—messy!—laying out images for another accordion book, amidst other projects. I always love seeing the work spaces of other artists.
Do the Simplest Thing and Steal Inspiration
This week, I participated in the Simplest Thing Challenge at MindfulArtStudio.com. Each day, we were given a one-word prompt to interpret however we chose. And we were invited to do the simplest thing with it.
I love this idea of asking, “What’s the simplest thing I could do in my art-making today?” Not striving for brilliance. Just making some marks and enjoying the process.
Here’s what I did with some of the prompts.
The first prompt was “closer” and Amy made a suggestion of choosing just a couple of colors and seeing how close you could get the marks to one another, but I also played with how close in hue I could shade between the colors.
The second prompt was “branching,” and I directly imitated the work of another artist whose painting I admired. Hers came out better. I’d like to try again with this one, hopefully many times until I get something I really love.
But my favorites came from a prompt of “squiggle.” For these, I just went my own way. I think I love this prompt so much partly because it reminds me of writing.
Then, I got inspired by seeing what another artist did with squiggle, a complex composition done in pen. I imitated hers in many regards, but in watercolor and with my own approach, including adding dots with my new gold pen.
I found, even with the invitation to do the simplest thing, I often struggled to come up with anything satisfying. Sometimes, I just needed to experiment with different media, different sizes of paper, different approaches. Other times, looking at what the other artists in the challenge made helped me find inspiration. I felt a bit bad about that. Where are my own good ideas? But then, I remember the age-old wisdom, so well articulated by Austin Kleon in his wonderful book on creativity, Steal Like an Artist. The idea is to borrow shamelessly from the work of other artists. Don’t plagiarize, of course, but let yourself be inspired by looking at, and using, ideas from other art works that you admire. Composers used to do this all time. Brahms writing Variations on a Theme by Haydn, for example. Just give credit where credit is due.
This week’s Wonder Spark is inspired by the work of another artist.
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