Today, a workshop participant emailed me to ask, paraphrased:
Do you find that art is more mental than physical?
…which is a perspective I’d not considered before - but the answer, for me, is YES. I spend loads more time sketching, messing with values, trying different compositions, etcetera… than I do actually painting. My prep sketchbooks are full of ideas which haven’t been painted, and most never will be.
Once in a while, I’ll do something unpremeditated - just for the play of slapping colorful, buttery paints around on a surface. And sometimes these even turn out, as witness this piece (painted in a day, based on an idea that popped into my head the night before). Of course, if I’m painting en plein aire, then that’s without planning - but it’s also small and the investment of just an hour or two. Doing anything else requires more; I mean, how could someone just plop a 30×40 canvas on the easel and start in on a representational piece without a roadmap of some sort?
Maybe there are savants who can do that…but I ain’t one of ‘em.
Painting: “Suspended Animation”, 20×11 oil on Yupo - Legacy Contemporary, Scottsdale - 480.945.1113
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April 14th, 2008 at 7:58 am
I forget who said it, but it has been claimed that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
But I think that only applies to things that are constrained by the real world ( like science and engineering). The perspiration part is necessary because the vast majority of the things that one can dream up simply have no relationship with reality — and it’s very hard to fly a real airplane in a virtual world — or vice versa (though the latter has been tried countless times).
Aside from the obvious acquisition of basic drawing and painting skills (which is really a given), I think genius in art truly is about 99% inspiration (ie, almost completely mental).
Unless one includes marketing and selling the paintings — and then art is also about 99% perspiration, of course. But that’s not really part of the creative process, so I don’t think it counts.
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