Saturday, November 08, 2003

imagination

“It is our inerrant right to create, but the right to create has been largely stripped from us. At an early age we are told that creating isn’t practical…. doesn’t make one a living and is just general nonsense. One has to look no further than a school curriculum to see how slowly, over the years we spend in schooling, the arts are left further behind until they have no relevance at all…….. and we all begin to fit into whatever dead, old slot that we are told……….. Not me. God forbid it. No paying for big houses or new cars working a job I have to…to keep up with the rest of this spoiled, almost vomiting with too much society. No denying my God-given right to create.”

I feel very frustrated today….not much is going right with my work and the voices of ‘reason’ and that dead, and wretched left-brained parent are assaulting me. I am at times tempted to go in the direction of others, but I cannot deny myself and my natural way of working and seeing. Nothing is more boring to me than copying what I see and whenever I see a work with such technical skill I am only momentarily impressed. Momentarily. I need more. It isn’t enough to have technical ability and that alone is quickly forgotten. I want to see the idea…the mystery of the mind of the artist. What has been created is God’s… we have the opportunity to create new things. Take a picture. It will last longer.