I'm studying holes and their significance.
Right now I'm using organic shapes, how they have holes though age, how they deteriorate. Or maybe having them represent space and stars and constellations.
About every 5 minutes I think this is stupid.
When I'm doing a study, the 1st one I make doesn't have to be 'the one.' It doesn't have to look good. It's the 1st one of the series or study; it's made to learn from and then do an improved version. The problem I have is moving to the improved version.
Excuses.. it was a lot of work to make that... is it worth making another one... maybe this is a stupid idea... MAYBE there's something more important that I should be working on. It's my brain thinking. My brain is good for figuring things out, but when left on it own it seems like it's always out to get me. It almost seems like it's separate in a way, from me , a tool for me to use when I need it... otherwise it seems to try to take over with all of it's fears and criticism.
I start having doubts -- why did I pick holes to do a study of, maybe this was the wrong choice -- maybe I should go into another direction, but I feel like I haven't given this a chance to develop. I typically get scared and think that I'm wasting my time and move onto something else that I never fully develop either.
It reminds me of an exercise that keeps sticking in my head from a book called "Learning By Heart" by Jan Steward and Corita Kent. You're supposed to sit and look at the shadows for 15 minutes and when you're done, you look for another 15 minutes. You think that you've seen them all in the 1st 15 minutes, there couldn't possibly me any more... but when you keep looking you keep seeing more... lots more. So I want to give this study the additional '15 minutes' and keep looking, searching for more 'shadows.'
I keep going back to this time in high school when I was working on a picture, with a friend. It was a piece of paper maybe 20x24 and we had drawn a small face in the middle and the rest of the paper was a grid that we were filling in every other square with orange paint. My favorite art teacher came up to us and said something like 'some things don't need to be finished...' saying in an indirect way that were wasting our time.
That has always stuck in my head. We stopped, but maybe we should have finished that picture, maybe it would have been a very Zen experience for us, maybe we needed that repetitive action for some reason, maybe it was important. Maybe I wouldn't always feel that there was something more important that I should be working on.
I'm going to keep studying holes, until I'm done.
Yay for you! This series is amazing. It is so refreshing to watch you explore holes.
ReplyDeleteOh I understand you completely! But.... you are contributing with your study to our knowledge as well. Holes are a lot more that what they appear at first. You already know that so, just keep on doing what you've started until you feel satisfied. I've been enjoying watching your experiments and work done.
ReplyDeleteYES! Please keep studying them. I truly believe that your chosen theme is so interesting and it's absolutely crucial to give yourself a chance to explore it further.
ReplyDeleteWhat have you made so far is wonderful but even if it wasn't, that would also be perfectly acceptable. We don't have to create masterpieces all the time but we do need to give ourselves the luxury of exploring and playing with concepts and materials.