G. Steve Journal

Special

Came across some fascinating explorations of what it means to be an "artist" excerpted from "Daybook: The Journal of an Artist" -- a collection of journal entries by artist Anne Truitt.  She delves deep into her own psyche in an attempt to learn what drives her to create and whether that makes her special:

This leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that artists are, in this sense, special because they are intrinsically involved in a difficult balance not so blatantly precarious in other professions. The lawyer and the doctor practice their callings. The plumber and the carpenter know what they will be called upon to do. They do not have to spin their work out of themselves, discover its laws, and then present themselves turned inside out to the public gaze.

[thanks Brain Pickings]

What Is Art II?

Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist of the 1960s, declared:

“Organized perception is what art is all about.”

 

What Is Art?

Came across some provocative excerpts from a book written in 1897 by Leo Tolstoy entitled: "What Is Art? –– part of our ongoing investigation of emotion, or "feeling" vs. intellect in the creative process.  Tolstoy makes the case that the test of art is whether it creates emotional resonance:

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.

[thanks, Brain Pickings]

Finding That Thing

Came across an excerpt of author Rebecca Solnit's book "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" and was intrigued enough by the theme of the book to order a copy.  Her book about photographer Edward Muybridge, River of Shadows, was excellent and I'll look forward to her musings on creativity:

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since.

[thanks, Brain Pickings]