born an artist?

A Tera's Wish reader sent me some quotes from artists and authors, and with her permission I am going to share some of them with you. It seems inevitable that as artists we face our own feelings of inadequacy from time to time. For me, this is generally when I am given a great opportunity and then I think 'who am I to do this?" (Happily, Marianne Williamson gave me the answer to that - "who am I not to, when God gave me so many gifts, not to use them when I am blessed with the opportunity to do so!")

When I was at my publisher earlier this year, a group of artists I was working with began a discussion about the perception that artists are born. This came up because one of the Editors that was with us had gone to work with someone that she idolized as an artist. When they began to work, he pulled out photos and a projector to create a pattern. She was dumbfounded because he was such a great artist she thought he would never work from a still photo!

Let me share some of those quotes with you, and then I will address this further . . .

• Harriet Beecher Stowe got the idea for Uncle Tom's Cabin reading in the newspapers how abolitionists were helping runaway slaves.
  
  
• Mozart composed while "walking after a good meal." And as it also sounds, when he couldn't sleep. Where the ideas came from, he had no idea. But said that he could never force them to come.
  
  
• Dostoevsky wrote down whatever came to him, then worked on it for months.

I chose these three because I think that they illustrate the diversity with which artist's work. What I don't like about the idea that creativity is divinely inspired is that it takes away control. I believe - and I know that all of you don't have the same religious beliefs as my own, so you will need to interpret this for yourself - that God has already given us everything we need to create. To say something is divinely inspired is to acknowledge the creative gift He has given us. However, that is not to say that we have to wait until "inspiration strikes" - as though God withholds inspiration from us until some time out of our control.

Jagdish Parikh wrote, "All knowledge is already present, and the most we can do is create conditions in which intuition will occur. It's like rain pouring down from the heavens--to have more of it, we need only to remove our umbrellas." Isn't that a lovely analogy? What you need, you already have - in more ways than one.

It never ceases to amaze me the number of rules we set up for ourselves. "You are not a REAL artist unless you can . . ." When we set up rules like this, the blank is usually filled in with something we cannot do. Yes, some people are born with more musical ability than others. That does not meant that only the best violinist in the orchestra is the only artist. There are many levels of artistry and we are always growing. To limit yourself in the tools available to you as an artist, or to set up rules with no real basis in reality, is foolish because you are only hurting yourself.

home |  articles | the workshop