New Painting

This new painting is too large to see the whole all at once while I'm working, so I had to improvise a longer paintbrush.

Advice to the Young Artist

About 40,000 years ago a caveman mixed some burned bone and saliva. He saw that he could make a mark on the stone of his cave wall with this. These marks became patterns and images of bison, hunters, and horses. He found that he could make an indelible impression upon the world around him and that his mark would last… beyond his lifetime, and his children’s lifetimes. For how long, I’m sure he didn’t know. But here we are today reflecting on the meaning of what some unknown man did 40,000 years ago. Such a simple thing as rubbing dirt and ash onto stone walls… and we wonder. We wonder because we know this has a meaning. Survival was difficult enough for him without wasting his time smearing mud onto a wall.

Later these pictures evolved into pictographs and the pictographs into alphabets… and the alphabets formed words, and the words became the Odyssey, and Hammurabi’s law, and Plato’s Republic, and Shakespeare, and the Constitution… and Harry Potter.

For me, art is meaning itself. It is communication; it is reaching out and connecting to someone else in the deepest way and finally knowing that we are not alone. Because of all these things, art is the foundation of civilization. Everything that man has ever built rests upon it. For me, it’s that big.

It means something… something a little different for each person. That’s why art isn’t just for the rich or the highly educated. It’s not some obscure language that no one can really understand. It is what it communicates to you. It’s around us everywhere, it’s within everyone. Making art is simply making something with passion, with every ounce of your soul.

Especially in the world today, we’re constantly inundated with voices… from the TV, magazines, radio, computer… from every direction saying everything there is to say. It’s hard to find your own voice amidst the static. Your particular way of expression that most fully communicates you. It’s a long journey of self discovery that, for the artist, never really ends. So I’d like to pass along a little advice, to clear out a little static so you can hear your own voice. Most of it is for those of you who would like to become artists, but I think it also applies to everyone who’s searching in life.

• Don’t worry about what is fashionable and popular. If you’re interested that’s fine, but don’t let it dictate your actions. Do what is interesting to you. Robert Henri, a great artist and teacher said in his book The Art Spirit

“For an artist to be interesting to us, he must have been interesting to himself. He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation. He who has contemplated has met with himself.”

If you do what is interesting to you, your work will speak to us. And if your work speaks it will become what is popular, it will become the thing that everyone talks about.

• Copy the work of the greatest artists that you love. You will learn more directly from them than anywhere else. And what you love about their work will sneak its way into yours. Copying is great for learning, especially if you can capture the spirit of the thing. But remember, that’s the goal, the spirit. Don’t try to borrow someone else’s language of art. By imitating Michelangelo you may become half of what he was, but then you will never become all of what you are.
• Whatever it is that you do. Whether you sculpt, or paint, or make sushi… do it a lot - every chance you get. If you do this all the time, you will either realize that you should be doing something else, or you will get much better at what you do. And if you happen to find that you should be doing something else, don’t despair, you’ve just learned something very important – don’t waste your time doing the first thing when you could be finding what you love and doing that to the best of your ability.
• To become a master at anything, you must first master what you already have. Only then can you truly add to your knowledge.
• Many people say that there is nothing new to say in art… that everything has been said. They’ve been saying this since ancient Greece… and just look at everything since then, that couldn’t be said.
• Don’t worry about originality; you couldn’t shake it if someone beat you with a stick. There has never been and never will be anyone exactly like you. Even twins who share DNA and grow up together end up being different. What ever you do will be distinctly yours. The question is how can you best use it?

I’ve got one final piece of advice before I answer any questions you might have.

• Get out there and talk to people about art. Go to museums, go to galleries, meet people, ask questions… the more people you talk to the more knowledge you’ll gain and you might also build some interesting and helpful friendships. Art is a business also, like anything else. You have to go out and see what’s happening in your field. You have to network. If you look at history, all the artists in the history books were talking to other artists who are now in the history books. They collaborated and pooled their resources and that’s why they’re in the history books. They saw each other as assets and not competition. In the long run, that’s what re really are. I may be 10 years older than most of you, I may be a teacher now, and you a student now. But 10 years from now that won’t matter. I’m still a student of life now, and I’ll still be a student in 10 years. It’s a long journey and the truth is we’re all contemporaries. We’re all fellow travelers through life, right now.

Hendrickje Stoffels

This is a copy I just finished at the Met. It is Hendrickje Stoffels by Rembrandt.
I love the psychological content in her eyes. The photo has a little glare in the top right. I'll have to update the photo.