What is the one thing that nearly all artists struggle with?
A simple question really – What should I paint?
Why is this such a problematic question then?
It is problematic because there is always that fine line between, what I want to paint and will people want to buy it? This is true for artists who want to make a career/living out of selling their art work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been down that road and become trapped in that way of thinking. The problem is that when you begin thinking like this, you cut yourself off from your own creativity because you can no longer allow your creative intuition to do its part. You shut down the voice of your creativity. The fact is that we can never make anyone else in this world happy by our actions. To try and second guess what some one else might want to buy is not only a complete exercise in futility, it is absurd.
To further confuse the issue is the traditional business point of view which talks about customer profiles, target markets and all that sort of thing. The fact is that this model does not allow the truly creative artist to create unconditionally, which is where they will do their most brilliant work. You cannot fetter creativity and expect a great result, it must be allowed the freedom to become what it is meant to be.
And on top of this if you are trying to market your work through the gallery system, they will want you to develop a recognizable style and stick to it. You become a nicely packaged commodity and are expected to keep churning out similar things if you want to get shown in the right places.
In light of all of this it is to your advantage to decide early on, what kind of an artist you want to be.
Hundertwasser’s Kawakawa Toilets designed and built by Friedrich Hundertwasser were his final creation. I recently had the opportunity to take a look at these unique toilets which are in the main street of Kawakawa in the Northlands region of New Zealand. They have become a tourist drawcard for the 1870s and early 1880s coalmining town .
Hundertwasser’s ideas may challenge you, but this is what he said of his work;
“I should like, and I do it too quite instinctively, to live an example, live an example to people, paint for them a paradise that each may have, he need only grasp it.
Paradise is there, but we destroy it.
I want to show how basically simple it is to have paradise on earth.
And everything that the religions and dogmas and the various political creeds promise, is all nonsense.”
The toilets weren’t the only thing he he did while in town. He also did some wonderful murals with quite profound writings embedded within them. Here are some snippets from one of them.
A Hundertwasser Mural In New Zealand
Today’s Question: How do you create ‘meaning’ within your own creative output?
A foray into the Celestine Prophecies recently acquainted me with the idea that the first stage of spiritual awakening is when we perceive beauty within everything, that all things have their own inherent beauty. As a creative person, this is something that resonates very deeply with me. I find it fascinating therefore that some people who profess to have great spiritual insight, put forward the idea that this world is just a place of suffering and misery and basically ugly and un-spiritual along with everyone in it.
And yet there so so much beauty everywhere we look if we but have the eyes to see it. One of the great benefits of training in the visual arts – painting, drawing etc is that you are taught to see the world in a very different way. You learn to be more present to your surroundings and pay attention to things that would otherwise completely pass you by.
Today’s Question: What loveliness can you find in your world today?
