making art is hard

 “Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work and by learning from their work.  They commit themselves to the work of their heart, and act upon that commitment…making art is hard. Talent is a snare and a delusion.”Art and Fear: Observations on the perils and rewards of artmaking. David Bayles and Ted Orland.

In the summer of my freshman year in high school, I attended a national arts camp at the University of Kansas at Lawrence consisting of specially picked kids from across the country ages 14-18…. It was six weeks of intensive classes in painting, life drawing, and cartooning. I had been a big fish in a little pond in my high school and it was easy to be confident about my abilities…

…until I watched Diane work at her art.

Diane was my roommate. She had curly red hair and dressed like she did not care what anyone thought. She was difficult and arrogant. I did not like her but her facility in interpreting any object of her gaze was irrefutable.  She worked confidently and her pencil easily went to all the right places ..capturing nuance, shadows and gesture….maddenly adept. And it was not because she worked hard at it…she just had it…a rare (albeit obnoxious) natural genius. We managed the summer together via avoidance. She paraded her unfair advantage throughout the dorm. My stuff was stiff and hard won. Hers was loose and she could accomplish with three well-placed lines what took me a dozen.

 I never heard anymore about Diane after that summer. The dark side of me has imagined she got married to an Allis Chalmers mechanic, had half dozen kids, got fat and never drew again. I was altogether intimidated.

I think that my summer with Diane contributes largely to the healthy response I have to the silly conversations that invariably arise at shows or in workshops or classes. They almost always include the refrain…. “You just have talent” or “I wish I had that kind of talent”.  The myth of the potency and exclusivity  of talent absolves us of the obligation to work hard. It evades the need for commitment to work and is a “snare and a delusion.”

Diane had talent. Michelangelo had talent. Marty works hard. Most of us have to work hard.

martial artists—energy to create

“Energy follows attention.”

I credit these words to a friend. She didn’t give a reference. I think it may be a martial arts term. She was introducing them into a discussion we were having of an ongoing personal problem of mine.  They did not seem particularly potent when she spoke them. She asked me to bring them to bear on my weighty situation over the next week.  She told me that the more I allowed myself to focus on my dilemma the more energy I was giving it. By the time of this discussion my difficulty had already morphed into a decidedly energetic beast.   She suggested that I practice being aware of my attention and gently remove it from the problem and consciously place it in a more positive place. Simple idea.

But wrenching my attention away from this now alluring leviathan was accomplished in forced and painful increments over the next few days. Surprisingly, the practice strengthened upon each small turning until I sensed that the Beast was in fact being divested of power. This is a great lesson worthy of creative application to life issues  as they unceasingly present themselves.  With that said….

“After making the decision that my art, whatever form it takes…writing, drawing, speaking, painting….is worthy of my time, discovering how to insert that creative space of time into my day looms large.” This is the beginning of a previous post that I am seeking now to continue.

 “It seems that the energy of these (creative) people is internally generated and is due more to their focused minds than to the superiority of their genes.”…..Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  in Creativity

I hold to the idea that creating is supremely necessary to being human and not an elitist or selfish endeavor. It is imperative. Because of this, I can unquestionly make space for creating to happen. I will begin to view the obstacles to creative space in very much the same way I deal with the “Beast” of my personal dilemma. I turn my attention to making space. I attend to its possibility. I turn attention away from the critic  and the pressure for anal tidiness. My attention is on the possibilities and those possibilities are energized.

attention to painting

My intention to continue the last post has been derailed in a good way. With only so much time set aside daily for creating, painting has won over writing for a season.
Let me explain the paintings I have been doing the past few late evenings. I have created a new page for these "honoring the lovely loser" accessible  on the home page index of pages.
"Theodore:honoring the lovely loser" is the title of this series of post-work, post-dinner quick paintings  I have been doing after everyone in the house is in bed.  This is not the usual me. I am an early morning person. Getting to bed after 10 is one of several radical decisions that speak death to old routines and a sense of normalcy...shaking up old stuff is something I need at this time in my life.

Concerning the subject of these paintings.... I am not seeking to be cute or pander to popular ideas..I am hoping for some degree of honesty in revealing what is deeply meaningful to me. The idea of giving honor to what is inconsequential aligns itself with previous posts about seeing well or seeing with a kind of third eye. The beetle is indigenous to southern NM...or at least to my front porch...where I found him/her and inhumanely ended life for the sake of adding to my stock of models.

Concerning the challenges to my painting style..."tight" would be a fitting adjective for much of my work..not that this is "bad", but in these paintings I am seeking to combine careful seeing with a looser hand.  So far, I am excited about the results.  You might notice the progression in that if , at a later time, I dated the paintings.

Concerning the name...It evolved from a Facebook posting conversation that was kind of organic. Naming work has always been something I have found distasteful and I usually let someone else do it.

I will post more as they dry.  I would covet comments and good criticism. marty

space to create 1

After making the decision that our art, whatever form it takes…writing, drawing, speaking, painting….is worthy of our time, discovering how to insert that creative space of time into our day looms large. It needs to be reasonably free from external interruptions and, even more, the internal ones. It is no wonder, really, that most don’t pursue these creative intentions especially if there is little or no financial gain. The practical usually wins.

On a recent walk I passed a small creek that was flowing under the road. I noticed that as it ran from under the road and down a hill, it suffered a kind of division. A small part of it went off to the left diverted by a rock. I say “suffer” because the mainstream lost energy and the diverted stream had so little substance that it was lost in the tall grass.

I like this divided stream metaphor for many reasons, but particularly when I am realizing the need to follow through on healthy intentions to create. I see whole days consumed with attention to many secondary activities that suck the life out of a resolution to find creative space. Energy is given to the urgent and the important is only sporadically realized. I am convinced that this dearth of space has allowed many DaVincis and Michaelangelos to live and die fruitless.

“Energy follows attention” (next time)

seeing/drawing and frederick franck

“Frederick Franck is an artist and author who believes in seeing everything around him… [this] does not mean simply looking at, but instead actively realizing the importance of everything around him, especially other people."- The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution


I am powerless over the compulsion to amass books (an adaptation of AA’s first step). I have walls of books and my chair is surrounded by several tall piles that are all urgent reads. Most of them are books that friends or favorite authors endorsed…people whose reading I trust. But some of them arrived mysteriously…I happened on them in a used bookstore or discovered them when I ventured down appealing rabbit paths while in the middle of a search on Amazon. Frederick Franck’s The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation arrived in such a way—a kind of serendipitous gift.


“This book is handwritten because, in its way, it is a love letter, and love letters should not be typeset by compositors or computers.” Frederick Franck


Franck directs the reader/artist away from drawing for a result only and centers on the process that engages the eye, the hand and the heart. He opens the door to the inexperienced and the tentative to join encouraging us to “realize you are not ‘making a picture’. You are not being ‘creative.’ We are just conducting an experiment in seeing, in undivided attention.”


“Seeing/Drawing is such a way of inscape from the overloaded switchboard. It establishes an island of silence, an oasis of undivided attention, an environment to recover in…”      Frederick Franck


I think it would be truthful to say that self-promotion and self-consciousness are two distinguishing interior workings of the artist. Wanting to be liked and doing what it takes to advance that favor seems necessary to making the whole art gig work. (I think this applies broadly to all the arts). Franck sees these working against honest creativity and truly seeing… “a world that is fully alive.”


“Who is the man, the artist?...he is the unspoiled core of everyman, before he is choked by schooling, training, conditioning, until the artist within shrivels up and is forgotten. Even in the artist who is professionally trained to be consciously ‘creative’ this unspoiled core shrivels up in the rush toward a ‘personal style’ in the heat of competition to be ‘in.'"Frederick Franck


“Millions of people, unseeing, joyless, bluster through life in their half-sleep, hitting, kicking, and killing what they have barely perceived. They have never learned to see, or they have forgotten that man has eyes to see, to experience.”Frederick Franck


I have included some helpful links for more on Franck..in the "links" page to the left..

9/3/10...I just received a copy of A Passion for Seeing-On Being an Image Maker..looks really good.