An artist takes a yellow spot and makes it into a sun.
- Pablo Picasso
We can teach how to stroke a paint brush across the surface of the canvas. We can show how to mix colours to produce a new colour. We can model the use of charcoal on a piece of white paper to produce shading and we can also draw straight lines and perfect circles. The ability to create a really rich piece of art work takes time and energy to produce. Some visual artists will be able to pick up a brush and learn the intricacies that exist between the mind, and the hand quickly and produce great art work. It takes muscle memory, and learning how paints interact with the surface of a canvas, or the surface of a piece of stock cardboard. Depending on what types of materials you use, they will all interact with each other in varying ways according to the textures and other physical characteristics. Water colours will react a certain way on a particular texture of paper and artists learn the ways that these interactions work. They can manipulate the images through building this knowledge base, and I would imagine it takes practice, time, scaffolding knowledge to eventually produce something that was built out of hours of interactions. I firmly believe that true talent comes from how much dedication is afforded to a particular aspect of the mind, whether it's visual arts, dance, music, or whatever you choose to do.
Your post makes me think of a quote from Yoyo Ma, the world class cellist - something about practicing for hours and hours for years and years...and now you are calling me a genius. Yes, I think that technical use of tools and materials is an important part of the development of visual artists, musicians, and others. Proficiency comes with dedication, and the freedom to experiment as well as the discipline of practicing. A limiting thought is that every art work has to be a masterpiece; certainly musicians spend much more time practicing by themselves than they do performing. Thanks for this thoughtful post.
ReplyDelete