The fresh air of Annaghmakerrig

I have just returned home after four days spent at the Centre working on ArtLog. My task was to catalogue and abstract the entries. I have to say the content is fascinating. It is so interesting to see how people make connections, fashion their work and give their ideas physical form. More than one entry speaks about the impact that surroundings have on an artist's creativity. The Centre is positioned in a very beautiful landscape which has its own particular light changing with the time of day,not to mention the weather!. For example,this visit was punctuated by spectacular fog which surrounded the Centre in moist cotton wool and made it seem further away from the real world than normal! However, artists in their entries have spoken about how interacting with nature....simply by going for a walk..can stimulate ideas and illustrate new connections. One artist spoke about how the singing of the birds reminded her of a line in a poem. She mentioned it to a composer at dinner, he came up with music and now between them they have a poem set to music. Another artist spoke of walking to a faery fort which set off a whole load of associations in her mind that she used in her work. It seems to me, that as an artist, you are never off duty, that inspiration can lie in the most unlikely spots and in everyday occurences. How marvellous is that?

1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

I have often wondered when people use the term "artistic genius" to whom are they really referring? It generally implies some huge success or distinction in a field. However, anyone can be called this no matter what their metier- advertising executives to artists. It also, I think, implies that the person concerned has no real control over their genius..it just flows out of them and they can hardly help themselves.
Non-Artists cling to the notion of the artist as genius because it makes it slightly easier for us if we believe that artists are inspired by God, special people with a special calling so that we can be awestruck by their creativity and bow down in wonder. However, it is a fact that an artist's last work can be their finest as they bring a lifetime's experience and expertise to their art. I was talking to a painter recently at the Centre who made an interesting point. She said she thought it was such a pity that commercial success tended to come early to young artists who were taken up as the "hottest new thing" while the vast majority of artists spent their whole lives honing their craft with little or no recognition. She thought this made the process look easy when in fact producing Art that strikes an empathetic chord in other people is one of the the hardest thing to do.You certainly cannot do it well without being an expert in your chosen medium. I think Edison summed it up when he said "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration!"

Artistic process

ArtLog is a project that is attempting to record the history of a residential artists centre by documenting the artistic work that the artists carry out there. Software has been created so that artists can document or log their thoughts on the work as they do it. The project grew out of a concern that the trace or record of process is being lost in the modern age. Artists have always kept diaries, sketchbooks, written long letters to friends but now everybody uses email, digital cameras, blogs, twitter and other forms of mobile communication. This is fine except it can all disappear overnight! Paper is surprisingly robust and will survive neglect. Digital files are not by any manner of means robust and unless carefully managed they will decay and very, very quickly become obsolete. Unless we try hard to record our history, it might disappear and future generations will have no insights into what our world was like.
This history of a work of art is important. Non-artists are always fascinated by how an artist produces a work whether it is a picture, poem, musical composition. Those of us who can't envy those who can and want to have a little window into the world of the creative person. Perhaps artists dont think they should tell the rest of us how they do it? Is it important for artists to maintain a sense of mystery about what they do?. Do artists want to portray themselves as mere conduits for divine inspiration? ?The old romantic notion of the mad genius in the garret!
Well, I expect some do but most of the artists I have met are seriously intelligent people who work and practice at their art. People who enjoy the problems their work presents them with and actively seek out more problems not to solve. There is definitely an unknown factor in Art that can be inspiration or flash of insight that is hard to explain but a lot of art is technique and mastery of that technique.