Technique will get you out of a jam. Or so I was told by John Ravet the manger of the National Academy of Designs’ Museum Shop where I did a work study to pay for my continuing education there. In a former life he was a dancer that worked with Bob Fossey! Too cool. :)
It’s true. Technique will get you out of a jam.
However……as Alec Guinness’s character Gully says in the movie ‘The Horses Mouth’ …. and once you’ve learned it, you have to kick off your heals and blow it out the keyhole! YES!! Lol!! So why would you throw away everything you just spent a whole buncha time perfecting?
To be you.
That’s me in the pic above at Bear Mountain, plein air painting in my ‘self-taught acrylic’ years. I don’t do it very often, but always enjoy it when I do. There was something profoundly easy about the way I would approach work back then… that disappeared for a while once I left the academy. I had been taught technique. And I ate it up! I went from zero to academically trained in what felt like a flash. And when I got home to finally paint for myself…….I had lost my joy.
Gone was the naive optimist who would start by splashing paint about as I began to question everything I did. Worrying away with minutia. It took a while to really climb out of that. It was a mountain of information. Art history on your shoulders. So what are you gonna do?
Then little by little, it came back…but with a renewed sense of purpose. I was able to do things I never could before as my eyes got bigger and bigger…..the possibilities! I began scraping as much as building up my paintings….instinctively feeling the need to scrape it off of my feet and just be myself. How will it look, I felt ….once it’s passed through me, this knowledge. A lot of time was spent just getting my hands dirty.
Sometimes it takes a traumatic event to bring out an ‘all bets are off’ attitude. For me it was a little from column A…..and a little from column B. But I wouldn’t be me without it.
Suddenly, there were no boundaries. Nothing was off limits. I was given permission to do/be whatever I wanted. The more I let that out… the better I felt. The better the work was. Because it came from a different place. And that could only come from me. I was never really any good at fitting into molds anyway.
So now, I’ll admit that on MORE than one occasion…technique has gotten me out of a jam, but I’m always the one who butters the toast. ;)
Love & Learnin’!
Laz xx
P.S. Check out the movie ‘The Horse’s Mouth’! It’s truly an art lovers/makers classic. :)
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