Author: Neera

In the past two days, I introduced you to two people who profoundly impacted me by changing my perception of what art is, and we all could be artists. Today I will introduce you to the third person who gave me actual know-how of being an artist.

If you have been reading my previous posts, he is no stranger. His name is Austin Kleon. He has written four books and calls himself “a writer who can draw.” However, I believe his most significant achievement is that he has cracked the code of how to “be” an artist. He shares that knowledge freely through his blog and his books. I have picked three of his insights that have impacted me the most to share with you.

1. Art is theft

Austin came to fame with his second book, How to Steal Like an Artist, in which he shared all the knowledge he gained about becoming an artist. He demonstrates how you could do it through the book. The whole book is based on lessons learned from other artists. The artists who encouraged to imitate, copy, and steal so that new artists could learn. That is how they learned.

“We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that is how you will find your voice. And that is how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.” – Francis Ford Coppola, Source: HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST

“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light, and shadows; select the only thing to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.” – Jim Jarmusch Source: HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST.

The mistake the new artists make is that they think they need to make something original. The experienced artist knows that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.

“Art is theft,” said Pablo Picasso.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” (Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Austin writes many people find this idea depressing, but it fills him with hope. French writer Andre Gide, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

This is a very reassuring and novel approach to invoke creativity. It takes away the pressure of being original and making something out of nothing. As Austin says, we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” – William Ralph Inge.

But there is a caveat. You can’t copy without giving attribution; it will hurt you badly.

You can imitate to learn, as imitation is the best-known way to learn any skill.

When you steal, you have a responsibility to turn it into something better or at least different. As the famous poet T. S. Eliot puts it:

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.” – T. S. Elliot

Show Your Work

The second most important thing you ought to know to be an artist other than to “produce good work” is to “share your work.”

It used to be very hard to share your work ten years ago or so. You have to hold exhibitions; you have to find a publisher to publish your book. But nowadays it is very easy. The Internet has provided a platform for anyone who wants to share their work.

When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn. You don’t put yourself online only because you have something to say – you can put yourself online to find something to say. The internet can be more than just a resting place to publish your finished ideas – it can also be an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed, a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet.

Austin Kloen How to Steal Like an Artist

Have nothing to share this how you can start, suggests Austin:

“Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with your. You should wonder at things nobody else is wondering about. If everybody is wondering about apples; go wonder about oranges. The more open you are about sharing your passions, the closer people will feel to your work. Artist’s aren’t magicians. There is no plenty for revealing your secrets.

Be a Scenius

Most of the time, we think an artist is some sort of a “genius” who is born with special talents. This is a myth. This “lone genius myth” has dissuaded my promising artists from realizing their full potential.

If you believe in the lone genius myth, creativity is an antisocial act, performed by a few great figures – mostly dead men with names like Mozart, Einstein, or Picasso. The rest of us are left to stand around and gawk in awe at their achievements.

Austin Kleon Show Your Work

Austin introduces a healthier way of thinking about creativity, referred to by musician Brian Eno as “scenius.” A scenius is a group of creative individuals – artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers – who make up an “ecology of talent” – who generate and nurture great ideas.

According to Austin, If we look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.”

Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that the good work isn’t created in a vacuum and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

“What is great about the idea of scenius,” writes Austin, “is that it makes room in the story of creativity for the rest of us: the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses. It is not about how talented and how smart you are it is about what you have to contribute, the idea you can share, the quality of connections you can make, and conversations you start.”

If we can forget about the geniuses and concentrate on how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius we can lean and grow much faster. Internet is basically is a bunch of seniuses. Blogs, social media sites, email groups and discussion board forums are the platforms where people hang out and talk about things they care about and share ideas.

Needless to say, I am implementing many of Austin Kleon’s suggestions.

He has many more insights in his books How to Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. Read them and listen to his talks on YouTube and TED talks.

Tomorrow I will introduce you to one such scenius that has helped me a great deal in starting this blog.

I thought I knew what art was. It was the paintings, the sculptures, the drawings and the beautiful sometimes weird and abstract pieces they keep in museums and art galleries.

It was also something which students with no real potential studied in college and university. The bright kids study science and maths and law. Isn’t it? I mean who with 90% plus marks studied arts.

Then something weird happened. About two years ago (2017 to be exact), I came across the work of three men, which changed my whole perception of art. It was not that they appeared out of the blue like shooting stars and enlightened me. I was aware of them, at least one of them and was subscribing to his emails in 2012, but he made no sense to me so I stopped.

The man I am talking about is Seth Godin. And if you are anything like me in 2012, I am sure you wouldn’t have heard of him. You see in 2017, I learned there is a parallel universe and it is called Cyberworld. And in Cyberworld Seth Godin is God. Seth has written several books, has been a pioneer in online marketing and has been writing a blog for more than a decade without missing a day.

For years what he said didn’t make any sense to me because I was a nine-to-five employee with very little time for myself and with blinders on I went to work, came home cooked, cleaned and went to sleep unaware what was happening in the parallel universe. Then one day I realized I was not getting anywhere at work. That there is a creative side of me that needs expression but I had no clue how. That was when Seth Godin eventually started making sense to me.

Seth described a phenomenon that was happening on the planet earth. “The industrial age, the one that established our schooling, our workday, our economy, and our expectations, is dying. It’s dying faster than most of us expected, and it’s causing plenty of pain, indecision, and fear as it goes.”

He argued that the guaranteed jobs won’t be there for much longer and people need to be creative to survive in the information age which he calls the connection age. But more than that, life’s too short to spend it doing something that isn’t rewarding. So aim to thrive and not just survive. He went on saying:

“Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it … Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.”

He then explained what makes someone an artist:

I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artist, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.

Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artist, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artist because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”

Seth Godin

Seth is an artist too. He has created movement, singlehandedly, to help people understand the need of the time and how to equip themselves to respond to it which benefits them and the economy and mankind.

I define art as having nothing at all to do with painting.

Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Five elements that are difficult to find and worth seeking out are – human, generosity, risky, change and connection.

You can be perfect or you can make art.

You can keep track of what you get in return, or you can make art.

You can enjoy the status quo, or you can make art. 

The most difficult part might be in choosing whether you want to make art at all, and committing to what it requires of you.

He then urges you not to wait but be. If you want to be a writer, start a blog and write; if you want to be an entrepreneur, start a business from your garage. Don’t wait to be picked up.

“Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission, authority and safety that come from a publisher … who says, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you … then you can actually get to work … No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.“

He then tackles the question of why art?

“Because you can. Art is what it is to be human.” We human have been making art since the cave days.”

“Because you must,” he says. “The new connected economy demands it and will reward you for nothing else.”

Because art is scarce. Scarcity and abundance have been flipped. High-quality work is no longer scarce. Competence is no longer scarce, either. We have too many good choices – there’s an abundance of things to buy and people to hire. What is scarce is trust, connection and surprise. These are three elements in the work of the successful artist.

One kind of scarcity involves effort. You can put in only so many hours, sweat only so much. The employer pays for effort, because he can’t get effort he can count on for free. And the eager-beaver employee expands extra effort to make a mark but soon learns that it doesn’t scale.

Another kind of scarcity involves physical resources. Resources keep getting more scarce, because we’re running out of them.

The new, the third kind of scarcity is the emotional labour of art. The risk involved in digging deep to connect and surprise, the patience required to build trust, the guts necessary to say, “I made this” – these are all scarce and valuable. And they scale.

He describes what it means to make art.

“The joy of art is particularly sweet … because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It’s precisely the high-wire act of “this might not work” that makes original art worth doing.”

I urge you to read his books and listen to his YouTube videos.

In tomorrow’s post, I will introduce you to the second person who changed my perception of art.

Top photo by Falco Negenman on Unsplash

I need a bliss station. The place where I can retreat from the world and do what I really want to do – read, write, draw, cut some pictures and make as much mess I want without having to clean it.

Follow your bliss, says Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Discerning one’s bliss, Campbell argues, requires what he calls “sacred space” — a space for uninterrupted reflection and unrushed creative work. He recommends that everybody should build a “bliss station” into which to root oneself:

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth

Yesterday, sitting in the front porch, reading Anne Dillard’s The Writing Life once again in the perfect winter sun, I came across a paragraph which I had underlined in my previous read:

I write this in the most recent of my many studies – a pine shed on Cape Cod. The pine lumber is unfinished inside the study; the pines outside are finished trees. I see the pines from my two windows. Nuthatches spiral around their long, coarse trunks. Sometimes in June a feeding colony of mixed warbles flies through the pines; the warblers make a racket that draws me out the door. The warblers drift loosely through the stiff pine branches, and I follow through the thin long grass between the trunks.

Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

I stop. I close my eyes and transport myself to Annie’s pine shed. I see a desk against the window looking out at the pine forest. I want that, I tell myself. I want a study of my own and a desk against the window. I get up and review all the rooms. Which one has the potential to be my bliss station?

Now that kids have left home I have four bedrooms to choose from. One of them is already a study, equipped with a table, a printer, and numerous filing cabinets. My husband lays claim on it, although he rarely uses it. I leave it alone. Both children’s bedrooms are overflowing with stuff they have left behind. Their storage area. Their claim on the rooms they will never come back to but will never let go of either. “Leave our rooms as they are,” they have instructed me. I move to the fourth room.

The fourth bedroom is the best of the lot. It has an ensuite which makes it a perfect guestroom. But it also has the best view of a row of pine trees almost touching the sky. In winter, the sun comes in through the window. This is it. I want to take out the spare bed and replace it with a big table.

I come back to the book, while my mind is still making plans – how can I get rid of almost new bed we bought a couple of years ago, where can I source a table from, how to get my husband to agree. I start reading the book and on the very next page Annie writes:

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. When I furnished this study seven years ago, I pushed the desk against a blank wall, so I could not see from either window.

Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

There it goes. All the excitement of having a perfect study. I still can do it but I know we need the room for guests, who come frequently and need the ensuite. “You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a tool shed meant for mowers and spades,” writes Annie. I go to the darkest room in the house, one with the least amount of distractions.

I push back my husband’s massive Apple computer to one side to make room for my laptop. I plonk a corkboard against the wall with my cuttings. I leave the ironing table unfolded to permanently obstruct the view from the window. Inch by inch I occupy the real estate in the filing cabinets. My “bliss station” is ready. It is cold and miserable here. I have installed a small heater to warm my feet. Next winter I might invest in UGG boots. This winter heater will have to do.

Top photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash