What is the most important quality in an artist? Truthfulness trumps talent. A capacity for joy beats conscientious drudgery.
I believe the most important quality of an artist is truly connecting with your own work. Therefore, one’s work must be personal.
Does the work transmit the qualities, the kind of experiences and the intuitions I’m after? Is the painting transmitting the amazing relations of color and light, matter and formation, that painting is able to bring to our eyes and intuition?
Too many artists, and way too many people, are bent on impressing more than connecting with others. Impressing is walling yourself off, connecting is letting your guard down, which takes more confidence and guts than the self-effacing get credit for.
“I’m always asking myself how it’s possible to create something meaningful from something commonplace. Painting is a way for me to try to prove that poetry, beauty or whatever else you want to call it comes from how you see versus what you see.”
Every small meditative thought can contribute to artistic pursuits. In that regard, making coffee and staring out of the window can be considered a part of the creative process. And I do both several times a day.
What is the vernacular of the picture-making, and how do I express things through that? Some of the best moments are when a painting can describe back to me the feeling of my work just by looking.
I try to work every day, often doing three or four pen and ink drawings before getting out of bed or before going to sleep. I eat and then stagger into the studio and work and nap and make calls and do chores and then get back to work with the improvements I have been mulling as I did the other chores.
You want to find your own world in painting, and you want who you are to come to the surface with all that integrated knowledge.
“One of my most important goals as an instructor is to help students clarify what they are looking for in their own work. It is within this constant clarification that a student may begin to develop a distinct and unique visual voice.”