Finding your voice…
Friday, March 2nd, 2007
In The Art Spirit… Robert Henri (1865-1929) advised his students to:
“Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing!”
He makes it sound so simple doesn’t he? But for anyone who has ever struggled to find their “voice”… they will also know that these few simple words speak an undeniable truth.
In critiquing his student’s work he describes two paintings thus:
“It is all a matter of the “sense” of these things and it is very beautiful. It is not the kind of art that is painful either in it’s conception or it’s doing. It seems to have been born of wit, and good humoured love of people and things - seems to have come forth spontaneously - [like] a love song. It seems so easy and it seems so glad to exist.
Beside it, the bitter duty thing, made of painful hard labor, of grinding and irritating patience; the thing great only because of the agony it took in its making, the dully labored, witless thing, the thing without love, the thing made not for itself but to win a prize, hangs ill at ease”
He goes on:
“I do not want to see how skillful you are - I am not interested in your skill. [I want to know] What do you get out of nature? Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you? What reasons and what principles have you found? What are your deductions? What projections have you made? What excitement, what pleasure do you get out of it? Your skill is the thing of least interest to me”
He of course is not eschewing the very real need for knowledge of the technical aspects… but more… encouraging their free use… in the delightful struggle to express the “feeling” of our subject.
Reinforcing the idea… he adds:
“You can do anything you want to do. When you, body and soul, wish to make a certain expression and cannot be distracted from this one desire, then you will be able to make a great use of whatever technical knowledge you have. I know I have said a lot when I say you can do anything you want to do. But I mean it. There is reason for you to give this statement some of your best thought. You may find that this is just what is the matter with most of the people in the world; that few are really wanting what they think they want, and that most people go through their lives without ever doing one whole thing they really want to do. An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself”
artwork & content Copyright Jean Burman 2007
- watercolour and willow charcoal on 640gsm Arches 53cm x 37 cm half sheet
FUZZY LOGIC
Sometimes… even in going back… we are still moving forward as we apply knowledge and wisdom gained along the way to the mix… and more new discoveries are made.
“A little bit of courage is all we lack… so catch me if you can… I’m going back…” Carole King “Going Back”
