The Creative Spark

In the arts, there is no undisputed "best", but technical skill is something quantifiable, and most regular folks see people who can do realistic art as "the best" while laughing at modern, more mysterious art. Technical skill is always an asset, and the best artists always have great technical skill, but emphasis on technical skill is overrated, in my opinion. Why? The principal difference between a great artist and someone who can paint well is that the artist has the creative spark, the technician just has technical skill. Understanding what makes great art separate from good technical art is a fascinating pursuit; one that involves an open mind, education, and experience in the art world. But it's fun, and it's liberating.

Here's some golden nuggets I value:

The key to being a great artist is to know yourself. Oh, there it is. You bored yet? But it's true, and it's profound. If you don't know who you are, your work never really has an author! Why sign it? Who wants to buy some angst-ridden art from someone who doesn't know who they really are? Great artists are like great wine: We need time to mature. Of course, maybe I'm just speaking about myself? Hmn. Practically speaking, if you know yourself, it manifests as personal vision, as confidence, as a stronger mark, as a consistent body of work and not randomly creative.

Great art is like great writing or great music. It takes lots of practice and skill, but you don't always have to have something important to say, sometimes it's just the love of form, the act of painting or drawing that, with time and practice before it, produces something beautiful.

Great painting takes a great eye. Design and composition will destroy a painting that otherwise may have been drawn beautifully, or conversely can save a painting that has been drawn poorly.

Sometimes you don't know what your major masterpiece is going to be. Francis Bacon, for instance, started this one painting called "Painting 1946" for which he is quoted is saying:

"It came to me as an accident. I was attempting to make a bird alighting on a field. And it may have been bound up in some way with the three forms that had gone before, but suddenly the line that I had drawn suggested something totally different and out of this suggestion arose this picture. I had no intention to do this picture; I never thought of it in that way. It was like one continuous accident mounting on top of another."

Bacon's "Painting 1946" is generally regarded as his masterpiece. The guy just knew how to make a great painting, albeit in his own brilliantly twisted dark vision. He made it work, making it up as he went. That takes more than technical skill, that takes an accomplished sense of vision, the ability to improvise, and a great eye. The creative spark.

The creative spark is that energy that a creative artist has. It's the enegry that is restless, pushing the artist to shoot for something new and different, even if it's only new to the artist. Something challenging, maybe risky. Something of personal vision. The pursuit of a vision is found in the great moviemakers, who will taylor their amazing technical facility to make each scene work to the service of good storytelling.

Again, The creative spark is like a jazz musician who will sacrifice ego to create a performance that doesn't showboat individual ability, but makes the song work. Vision is the key. The big picture, where thought and idea are all, and technical abililty is only is a means to an end.

Artists with the creative spark are not technically minded, though they have technical ability in spades. They'll do whatever it takes to make the painting work. Sometimes that means plenty of time and effort while drawing on that technical facility, and sometimes that means throwing that technical facility to the wind. The important thing is that the painting "works".

That creative spark commands attention. It keeps people off guard, not knowing what to expect. There's a sense of excitement. The creative spark can take one to a place where technical skill is challenged. The improvization of a jazz musician like Miles Davis, for instance, may not always be a flawless performance, but it can reach brilliant hieghts unavailable to the trappings of technical proficiency alone, but wide open to the artist who knows who they are. An artist who can draw from personal vision and communicate that more essential humanism.

Robert Motherwell, that enigmatic and genius abstract painter, once said that even after a lifetime of painting, he could still do a bad painting. I love that. That's my kind of artist.

Liam's Choice Artists: Cecily Brown: Gifted, Rude Painter

Hard, Fast and Beautiful,
Oil on Canvas, 254 x 279cm2000
Cecily Brown

I've discovered a new favourite artist. I don't always have my eyes faced outward to see who's hot in the art world, but I suppose I should, especially if it's someone brilliant like Cecily Brown.

I've got to comment that I don't dig the pornographic content. Not that I have anything against women, or sexuality, but I do have something against porn. I'm a Christian, after all. I prefer a PG rating. This stuff is offensive in it's content. But it's Brown's delivery that is so compelling. Her skill is undeniable, and the viewing of her work is so engaging, it's hard to look away even though I'm staring at something lude. Something unredeemably and unrepentantly sinful.

Ah, that word "sinful". I can feel my inner mocker snickering.

Hold on while I jump up on my soapbox: It's a good thing to be sinful nowadays. Smoking pot, swearing, and in this case, explicit sex-- it's all a good thing. To most people. For instance, outside of my Christian circle, most guys love porn. Most girls, too. Porn stars are seen as completely liberated, and heralded as heroes, and even role models. There's no shortage of porn in art school. Art school is almost like a next phase of sex ed. Of course, all of this is wrong. It's the sign of the times, I guess. Maybe you disagree with me? Write a comment about it below. But I digress. I now jump down off my soapbox.

My favourite painting of Brown's that I've seen is "Hard, Fast and Beautiful" pictured above. I know, I know, call me a hypocrite, but hear me out: I love the work of Francis Bacon. I love modernist paintings, Manet, Van Gogh... I love photos blurred by movement. Cubism. I love sketchy work; work that don't tell the whole picture. Brown's work has something of all of these. It's like Brown is an amazing lyricist who swears during every otherwise great line. She's reached into a box of Lucky Charms and pulled out all the marshmallows. Mmmmn. Maaaarshmallows.

I love "Hard, Fast and Beautiful" for it's simpler composition. It somehow becomes bolder and showcases Brown's handling of the medium and how her mind works, which in my opinion, is borderline genius. Brown seems to have an infinite capacity for conveying much with very little. Most of Brown's works are very busy and full. I'm a minimalist at heart, so frenetic design is a bit of a turnoff normally, but not here. That being said, of course my favourite paintings by Brown remain the ones that say more with less instead of those saying more that's said with less, but there's more of it anyway.

This painting above is titled "New Louboutin Pumps." It's a great example of why I love Brown's work so much. I mean, look at this thing! It's loaded. It seems to reference Monet, or other Impressionaist painters and Francis Bacon. In addition to porn and voyeurism. I read that her dad was a great art critic, someone named David Sylvester, and she used to cruise galleries as a kid with Francis Bacon. I don't know. Don't trust everything you read online!

I find myself wondering how quickly does she finish one of these massive eye-epilipsy-causing, brain warping celebrations of hedonism? If I was a fly on the wall of her studio, what would I learn about painting? Does she think her way through so many moments of multiple angles, movement and distortion? Or does it just happen naturally? I hear she works on up to 20 canvases at one time. My kinda girl.