Sunday, March 2, 2008


I've been re-reading Brook Jenson's Letting Go of the Camera again and it never ceases to amaze me how much insight he has into the mind and heart of artists. His words are full of warm inspiration and a cold dose of reality all rolled into one book and I love it.

"Be careful of allowing yourself the freedom of creativity; it might just shatter the limits of everything you now know. Creativity - the life of an artist - is not for the timid. You might find that you make some pretty awful art - on this trust me, I know. And not everyone will like or respect, (or buy, or understand) your work. But you will find that there are those who will "get it" and it is for these people and yourself that you create. It is for the process of exploring and finding, failing and finding, finding and sharing that you create."

Isn't this sooooooooo very true!?! Artmaking is such a personal endeavor - a deeply personal endeavor - and it's so very hard to share that with the outside world, knowing that the majority will not understand why you were compelled to create this at all.

A few more random thoughts...

"The process of being an artist is to forget everything that you know and to really see, with eyes that are simultaneously naieve and sophisticated."

"Artmaking is a battle, a confrontation, a pursuit, a matter of the soul and survival, a passion, a pile of frustration and a grain of reward, an irresistable impulse, an addiction, a form of self-imposed insanity in a world that does not require me to make art at all. My art is, therefore, a great joy simply because it is of no use whatsoever to anyone at anytime. . . . Artmaking is solitary. . . . Artmaking is about the soul."

LOVE IT!!!! :)

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