The Four Elements of Creativity. (4)

The following was written as a lecture for my students and all young artists. I will be publishing one element each day in my blog for the next four days. To read this lecture in proper sequence, please scroll to the first entry below titled "Fire" and read upwards from there. Thank you.

EARTH



Philip Guston, "Pit" 1976

I threw an I-Ching once in my reckless, younger years that read something like this;
"If you are planning your work, analyzing your work, sitting back and admiring your work....then you are planning, analyzing and admiring, but you are not working. If you have a gift from God, then get down and do it."
I never threw another I-Ching again. This one stuck.

I've sustained my painting career over the last twenty-five or more years hovering just ever so slightly above the gravity of the earth. Ironically, I get more creative altitude if I reach for smaller goals than higher. Lofty thoughts of artistic recognition early on in life were soon replaced with, "OK, what's the next art project?" Eventually, I learned it was more important to try to make great work than it was to try to be great.

Non-artists always make the mistake of thinking we artists are driven by inspiration. That late at night, great balls of firey revelations reveal themselves to us and we jump from our beds, and out of our skin, to lay down mused findings at two in the morning with our God-given talents. No, more likely we take little baby steps in concrete shoes. One step, than the next. It unfolds slowly with much effort. We pick up the steps from where past artists have left off; trying to continue the work they've already started but mortality ended. There's a reason why artists call the practice of their craft a "discipline."

If a young artist were to ask me how they could aspire to great things, I would tell them; "Learn to accommodate mediocrity." Not in your art, but in everything else that nurtures or otherwise "subordinates" it. As long as gravity exist, we will be pulled down to this base level. Here's where we pay rent. Here's where we do the laundry. Learn to balance your checkbook. Fortunately, it takes so little creative energy to tend this dirt garden. But ignore or neglect it and it will bury you and your aspirations alive. Stardom, if it happens to you and the very few, may only happen for a very short time. If you're in it for a lifetime, then you must learn to fly a very long distance, hovering just ever so slightly above the earth, weighed down in concrete shoes.