"True artists, whatever smiling faces they may show you, are obsessive, driven people." So said John Gardner, and I agree. But is it so bad to be obsessive and driven? With regards to art making, I think it is a fine state to be in at least once a day--hopefully more.
I am reading Ensouling Language, again, by Stephen Harrod Buhner because even though he is writing about the art of nonfiction, the practice of the craft--with its intense, insistent, stubborn passion--is the same urge to mastery in all artists, be they painters, dancers, musicians, cabinet makers, or writers.
This quote from Wallace Stegner struck a particular chord:
Except for amateurs and dilettantes, writing is not a part time occupation, nor is it the automatic spilling over of genius. It is the hardest kind of work, the making of something from nothing. No one but a dedicated, disciplined, even bullheaded individual is going to go on, day after day, sweating for five or six hours to make a page that may have to be thrown away tomorrow.
When an image comes into fullness, alive on the painted surface in a way that I could not quite grasp when first beginning to work with it, when that something takes on its own life and joins me in a blend of breath--that moment is gold. In that brief glittering moment there is no amount of money or acclaim that can match the sensation of fulfillment.
And there is an addiction to that experience.
I am using images from the Oracle cards of my Journey Oracle deck to illustrate these thoughts, because while all 47 pictures did not rise to this moment of gold, these did.
#12. This image was painted in my Mother's house the first time I returned after her death. While a few suggested it was a bit callus of me to paint instead of grieve, this is my grief.
#30. Sometimes it is the intensity of detail that suddenly transforms into the felt intensity of a passionate "Yes, this is it!"
#20. In the best way of art that transcends itself, I have no idea where this image came from. Here is form and essence, together.
#32. All artists check their work by feeling it. What is remarkable in this oracle image, for me, is not so much its construction as its sense of conversation with the other-than-human. I have felt like that too.
#10. Most times my art reflects back what I know, sometimes, it shows me what I don't know.
For me this is the most powerful sensation to which I am addicted--being led into the unknown.
