‘I don’t really have any artistic vision,’ he said. ‘I just draw the reflections I see in the subway windows when I’m riding.’
I appreciated his humility but could not believe there was not more to his work than that. I told him how his drawings awakened images in me of a landscape seen from high above the earth.
‘Maybe,’ he shrugged, ‘but that’s not what I make. I just draw the reflections I see in the subway windows.’
For him, grand meaning or significant metaphor was not a necessary purpose of his art. His was the art of close inspection, the art of simple observation. It was not the art of great ideas. He was a translator. He took the world as he saw it and gave it back to us. And that, for him, was enough.
How I wish my first friend had been so at peace with his creative talents. But he was not at peace with his art because he was not at peace with himself as an artist. Beneath that magical talent was a man in search of his place in the world.
There is no law that says art must express grand human themes or point beyond itself to larger meanings. For many artists the simple gestures of life, closely observed, are sufficient. I have heard it said that there are actors whose entire method of character development is to figure out how their character talks and moves, and then try to inhabit those mannerisms. When they get them right, they are done. They just walk the walk, talk the talk, say the lines. They have no feeling for the inner life of their characters and no wish to have any. The objective reality, and what it expresses, is enough.
For others, it is only by entering into the mind and soul of the character and having that knowledge illuminate each gesture and action that they can create authentic expression.
I am sure the same is true also for dancers. I know it is true for singers.
It is important to remind ourselves that what is central in any art form is not the scale or intent of our vision but the authenticity of that vision.
I remember a time twenty years ago when I was teaching a class on creativity in the arts and I asked a young woman to find an experience of grief or love in her life, then to find a painting or piece of music that gave voice to that emotion.
She was a weaver and I wanted her to experience an expressive kinship with the work of other artists in other fields. But she was having none of it.
‘I don’t care about that,’ she said. ‘My art isn’t about deep feelings, it’s about making things people like.’
For her, creating beauty through sensitive use of colour and texture and form and line was sufficient. She had no need – indeed, no desire – to place deep meaning in her work. Deep meaning, if there was to be any, was to be found in the way her work enhanced the lives of others by making them happy and enriching their visual environment. Her work had no more inherent significance than an inviting hearth fire, and she was proud to claim that humble simplicity.
It took me a long time to understand that gentle, almost domestic approach to the arts. As a creator myself, I, like so many, laboured under the belief that my art should have profound significance. It was not enough to be good; I had to be great. But through people like my student I eventually came to realise that though greatness may be a worthy dream, it is not a valid measure. Greatness is an idea, a status conferred by others. It is not something you can seek. If you fit inside the shape of your art and work with a committed heart, that is enough.
I wish my friend with the magic in his hands had known this. But he was still in thrall to the vision of others. He had not taken his magnificent talent and fit it into an aesthetic vessel that he could claim as his own.
Not all art has to address eternal questions. Art, any art, can live by touching some common human sentiment in us as surely as it can live by touching some deep emotional taproot. To inspire, to console, to reveal, to calm, or simply to entertain – these, and so many others, are worthy artistic purposes. The genius of art is that it can meet us where we live, and the joy of creation is that we can choose the place where we want our art to touch those who experience it.
My friend was a gentle soul with a gentle outlook on life. He should have been satisfied to express that gentleness through his amazing talent. It was not that he had nothing to say, he just hadn’t realised that what he had to say was enough.
What he had not grasped is that art is ultimately about giving authentic expression to what lives in your heart. People sense authenticity, even if they can’t quantify it or articulate how they recognise its presence. But they know it, and they relate to it, because authenticity has a spiritual resonance that we all understand.
If you can find what it is that you can say through your art that no one else can say in quite the same way, you are getting close to finding your authentic artistic voice.
Perhaps you feel the need to address the whole of the human condition. Perhaps you only want to decorate space or add warmth to the life of a family or put a smile on people’s faces. Perhaps you wish to do nothing more than transcribe what you see in a subway window. What matters is the quality of heart in your work, and the authenticity of the voice in which you speak.
If you are able to find that authentic voice and you have the courage to believe in it, you will never have to lament that you have nothing to say. Even if your voice is small and your intentions humble, what you say will be heard.
Too many artists, in trying to mimic another’s voice, find in the end that they have merely rendered themselves mute.
3
Inspiration and Training
The essential responsibility of learning your craft
‘There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.’ Emile Zola
‘Be a good craftsman; it won’t stop you from being a genius.’ Pierre-Auguste Renoir
IF SOMEONE TELLS you there is but one way to create or one way to find your artistic voice, be wary. They may have a technique or method that works for them, and you should always listen to what they have to say – after all, the essence of being an artist is to be open to the full richness of the world around us. But if they say, ‘This is the way it must be done,’ listen with caution. Take their words as a reflection of their confidence in their own method of creation but don’t allow them to distort your own vision or control your own search for the wellspring of your art.
This is not to say that you should ignore the techniques and methods of others. Much good can be gained by putting yourself in the hands of a teacher who has a definite and specific way of creating. Though you may chafe at his or her methods, you will benefit greatly from giving yourself to them. You will learn the discipline of working against your own inclinations and open yourself to a new way of shaping the external world into a work of art.
After all, any teacher who has lived a long life in the arts has hard-won knowledge, and the lessons he or she has to teach will imprint your work for the better, even if you choose to take a different direction on your own artistic journey. The talent you need is to know what lessons to take and which to leave behind as you move forward on your own artistic path.
Many years ago I trained under a woodcarver who specialised in iconostases, or altar screens, for Orthodox churches. The iconostases he created were often twelve feet high and twenty feet long, and consisted entirely of intertwined stems and leaves done in a traditional Byzantine style. He had learned this craft as a child in his native Greece and had spent forty years perfecting his methods and techniques. His creations were impeccable.
Though he claimed he could do other kinds of works, he could not, because he was singularly lacking in artistic imagination. He was a craftsman – a brilliant craftsman – who could carve a perfectly smooth surface and cut a perfectly clean line in the middle of a stylised leaf such that the line, made without measurement, was exactly equidistant