Sunday, November 1, 2009

Three of Four

Basingstoke, England, November 1, 2009. One of my art teachers once said the difference between an amateur and a professional is consistency. This underscores the chief message in the new book “Outliers,” which is that it takes a human 10,000 dedicated hours to perfect a craft/profession/skill, and this chronicle is a simple catalog of the thoughts, ideas, frustrations and practices that chart my course from part-time painter to professional, with a special focus on influences, including visual, written and oral that supply meaning or direction to my work. And that work comes in fits and spurts, as I continue to dedicate myself to a career in industry and only paint evenings and weekends when time affords it. That teacher of mine went on to say “when we first learn to paint, it is typical that one of four works is real art, a piece where the elements of design coincide with artistic intention and the creation is a lasting image. The rest need to be gesso-ed over or destroyed…When one reaches the point where three out of four works are “real art,” then its time to go professional!” I am still on that path to real art.

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