Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Looking for thoughts on an art conversation....

Do you think an artist is continually getting better and growing or do you think at some point they hit their prime and maintain status quo (as in an athlete or someone with physical strength and adeptness)? Do you think the freshness of ideas and eagerness to experiment in the early stages is second to the maturity of technical skill and experience? Or maybe early in one's learning curve, an artist hits on something above their present level and then they play catch-up for awhile? Hmmmm.......Check out your older work and tell me what you think!

2 comments:

  1. Shanna, you have an excellent question. I think it's obvious that all artist have a peak in their abilities. The question is: why do those abilities diminish? I'll have to get back to you on that one...

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  2. Thank you for the comment Kevin! I'm really trying to get under the surface of this question, past the "feel good" answer of thinking that if we all keep working harder, we will get better. Does our mental dexterity continue to get better, do our ideas remain as fresh and as responsive? Does life experience give us a maturity that we could not have earlier in our explorations? I was looking at some of my work 5 years ago and some of those pieces were so fresh and though the surface quality might have been lacking, they made up for that in the search, albeit niave! What if we went back and explored those same ideas with the adeptness we have at the present moment? The idea could not be as fresh, but could we present it in a different way? And maybe I'm just thinking too much :)

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