On Making and Teaching Art

What encourages you to work hard?  What motivates you toward passion for making art?  What animates your physical body to produce work?  What inspires your creativity?  These are questions I often ask my students.  Many times they work to receive a grade that will eventually show up as a miniature letter on a transcript that no one will ever see.  Sometimes they are animate out of fear of failure.  Often they produce out of obligation instead of passion, making work as if jumping through circus hoops.  As a professor, I accept all of these reasons for making work as long as the assigned product gets produced.  At the beginning of one's studies in the visual arts, the reasons for making work are irrelevant because the very act of making is educational enough.  Technical skills are best mastered by the repetition of making.  But none of the above-mentioned motivating factors produce one critical component of art-making and that is “creativity.”  Working, even lots of working does not guarantee creativity.  Creativity is elusive and in no way assured by effort or formula.  It can come slowly over long periods of time or like a lightning bolt, instantly brilliant and immediately gone.  Some artists have it in abundance and some struggle for it throughout their careers. Some have it and lose it, some have it and squander it, some have it and never know it and some never seem to get it at all.  It’s maddingly spiritual like the wind, no one knowing where it comes from, what direction it will take, or where it goes.  It’s the grand prize of art.  There’s one way I’ve found to make it more readily available and an unknown poet in Psalms found it also.  Listen.  “God’s works are so great, worth a lifetime of study—endless enjoyment.”  Psalms 111:2.  Observing and meditating on the works of God, his created world always seems to inspire creativity.  The next time you are struggling, close up your studio and take a hike.  You never know what works of God you will see that will move you to passionate creativity and wholehearted Praise.  “Splendor and beauty mark his craft; His generosity never gives out.”  111:3.  And that’s the good news.  

Thoughts on Psalms 109-114.

Making outdoors is also helpful.