THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 125 - ART

When I used to teach art I would draw along with the class, nowadays I’m not excited to share my lack of ability, at all. It’s all in my brain, but the link between my brain & my muscles was interrupted by the stroke. But, I would like to teach art again, so I have to develop a way to talk about it without drawing along. Having read thousands of art books, I should be able to explain a piece just by showing & talking about it. A big part of art is that it should be in the service of something, it needs to be relevant to whoever is the audience in order to be animated, come to life & be relevant in people’s lives. Because of this, the artist, who just wants to do the work must build in a large number of these relevancies into the work so that they are just a part of it instead of having to be thought about actively with the practice. I’ll talk about that in another piece. You must be totally natural when producing something totally artificial, it seems like a contradiction, but so many ways that the world works are. Much has been said about doing 10,000 hours to gain expertise in a field, I agree with this wholeheartedly, it’s probably more than 10,000 hours. What I haven’t seen as much attention to is practice. The 10,000 hours plus a daily practice is what is going to make you natural, flowing, comfortable & just plain good at your work. Lazy people & people just starting are both intimidated by these things, the 10,000 hours seems unattainable, “How can I make enough time to practice eight hours a day?” But eventually, your life just becomes about doing the work. Everything else becomes secondary. There are a lot of things that can distract you from the work, especially when you are younger. The central one is money & I’ll discuss that further in another piece.