Five Images a Day

Every artist is told - practice, practice, practice. But it is not always easy to do this, since life tends sometimes to get in the way. So finding a way to keep doing art is always important but nonetheless often challenging. However, I listened with interest to an interview done on NPR a couple of days ago by Rachel Martin. She was talking to famed photographer David Hume Kennerly about his new adventures with his iPhone 5 which he used as a camera. Having pared down his equipment to this one "camera", he set out to photograph the world around him in a very simple fashion, returning to basics of observation and curiosity.  The resultant book, "David Hume Kennerly On The iPhone: Secrets And Tips From A Pulitzer Prize-winning Photographer", has just come out.

David Hume Kennerly

He set himself the challenge of going out into his neighbourhood and taking at least five photographs a day, trying to look at the familiar and perhaps even the trivial around him in a new fashion. It was a way to sharpen his skills and extend his powers of seeing. In other words, it was the perfect example of practice, practice, practice to improve as an artist.  It was, as he described, his "photo fitness workout".

The parallel I made, as I listened to Mr. Kennerly talking - and remember, this is a revered photographer and Pulitzer prize winner talking - was the advice to go out with a simple, small drawing book and drawing tool. As a visual artist, I have always considered drawing to be the basis of understanding whatever it is that I am seeing in the world around me.

It takes seconds to make marks on a drawing book page - but whatever you are drawing then "belongs" to you. You know it, understand it better, remember it. It has become an integral part of you by the actions of mark making as your eye, brain and hand interact to record that simple object or sight.  Countless artists, down the ages, have done this.

Page from sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Having absorbed the image, it is then easier to edit and strengthen it, transmute it to something else. In other words, you can create art. Just as Mr. Kennerly created art through his simple medium of the iPhone, so each of us can use the image captured as the springboard to something else. Or just use the moment as a "limbering up", an exercice to keep eye/brain/hand coordination and skills.  Just look at what Turner did in his wonderful sketchbooks.

Joseph Mallard William Turner, 1831 sketch. (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

A Tower, 1831, Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Study of a Tree, with a Line of Trees Beyond, circa 1789, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775-1851 (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Sketch of an Interior; Also, a Renaissance Church Tower, circa 1831, Joseph Mallord William Turner (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

The Blue Rigi, 1844, watercolour, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775-1851, (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

The Channel Sketchbook, c. 1845, watercolour, Joseph Mallord William Turner (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Five quick drawings a day - a diary of one's voyage through life as you look around you, a record of moments of fascination and interest. And a way of remembering each day that your passion in life revolves around art.

Not a bad bargain to make. David Hume Kennerly's example is a wonderful one to follow for us all, in whatever version of art-making.

Creating Something from Nothing

Listening to NPR, this morning, Rachel Martin interviewed the English songwriter-singer, Emeli Sande, about her music, now that she is launching her first album here in the United States.  She is a highly lucid and engaging young woman, a neuroscience major, who has reverted most successfully to her first love, music, since opportunity came knocking. 

At one point, when asked when she started writing songs, she replied,

"I began writing when I was about 6 or 7. And even at that age, I just thought it was so incredible that you could create something from nothing, and it was all in your mind and imagination," she tells Weekend Edition host Rachel Martin. "The combination of poetry and music I just thought was incredible."

The phrase, "you could create something from nothing, and it was all in your mind and imagination", set me reflecting on how the same thing is true about visual artists, all composers – just about any creative act.  It is all so, so simple, in truth.  From some magical recesses of one's brain, out pops an idea, an inspiration, a "what if you do such and such a thing?  It is like finding a shiny, perfect shell as you walk along the beach.  You pick it up and turn it over, marvelling at it, evaluating it, examining its possibilities.

This remark dovetailed in a way with many of the theses that Simon Schama puts forward in his marvellous book, The Power of Art, in which he had fascinating and stimulating chapters on eight artists down the ages, from Caravaggio to Rothko, who have been revolutionary each in their own way.  The 2006 book accompanied a BBC/PBS series of the same name, which alas, I have not seen, but in any case, the book is - as always with Simon Schama's books - a gem.

Each of the artists examined in this book basically dared to adhere to their own visions, the ideas that emanated from their minds and imaginations. They pursued these ideas even if they were totally at odds with what other artists were doing or even what their patrons wanted them to produce by way of art.  Of course, they evolved over time, but they kept believing in their own inner voices and ideas. 

Blue, orange, red, Mark Rothko, 1961

Perhaps the last artist written about, Mark Rothko, was the one who had to keep seeking and clarifying his ideas the longest.  He once said that paintings had to be miraculous, Schama wrote.  And indeed, he was fifty years old before the miracle paintings began, his dazzling, amazingly subtle colour stacks. (Above,Blue, orange, red,  and below, Pink and orange.)  

Pink and orange, 1950, Mark Rothko

Rothko said that painting was an exercise in continuous clarification, as Schama wrote, but once the artist had clarified the ideas, he had to ensure that this clarity was passed on to the beholder.  Back to the dialogue, the communion, between artist's work and the viewer, for instance.

So simple, so elegant, so difficult - this materialisation, seemingly from nothing or nowhere save the inside of one's head - of something that then becomes interesting, beautiful, inspiring, memorable enough to speak to other humans.  Something from "nothing".

The Arts and Young People

On Sundays, I frequently listen with fascination and pleasure to the NPR programme, "From the Top", hosted by Christopher O'Riley, during which amazingly talented young people play classical music and talk with Christopher. This past Sunday, a delicious young woman, aged nine, was interviewed and then played Franz Liszt's Gromenreigen (Dance of the Gnomes). Her name is Umi Garrett and she is garnering prizes and kudos both in the United States and Europe for her mastery of the piano. What interested me and resonated especially was that her early talent for music was also accompanied, from 2 1/2 years old, by classical ballet. She also loves to paint and is good at maths, science and a host of other things.

In other words, she is a stellar example of what can happen when a young person is exposed to the best in what the arts can offer. It is not just in school that children need to be exposed to the arts, it is in everyday life, in every imaginable sphere. This is one area where it becomes so serious that the Georgia Legislature envisages elimination of the Georgia Council for the Arts, the central state funding mechanism that fosters the arts. When possibilities for young people to attend performances of music, ballet or theatre, to visit art museums, galleries or festivals or learn of new forms of art in the public arena dry up, the general level of culture is diminished.

I know personally how memorable live performances can be to a child. Growing up on a farm in Tanzania, there were few such opportunities. It was thus all the more special that on my first trip to England, my mother made a special effort to ensure that I was able to see the Royal Ballet dancing Swan Lake. I was five years old - it was magical - and I have loved ballet ever since. In the same way, a year or so later, the legendary pianist, Paul Badura-Skoda, came to our nearby town, Arusha, to visit his brother. He was persuaded to give a piano recital, in a small theatre with a tin roof ... it rained during his performance and the din above seemed only to underline the exquisiteness of his interpretations of Chopin or Mozart pieces. That evening was one of the most memorable moments of my life - I was so excited that I was soon learning to play the piano myself, not at all well, I hasten to add. But the whole experience helped make me forever a lover of music.

This  recording was made about the time I firstheard Paul Badure Skoda play the piano.

I was lucky - my family made the effort to give me such opportunities. But in Georgia, if opportunities for young people dry up, then we are all the poorer.

Trust

Growing up on a farm in Tanzania, I learned very quickly that trust between humans and between humans and animals made the world go round. Wild animals, wary and watchful, sometimes paid one what I considered the supreme compliment of trust, allowing a human near them, to share their world at close quarters, whether they were mighty elephants or miniature dik dik antelope.

Here in coastal Georgia, the same system operates with birds and wild animals we meet. I was watching a raccoon perched comfortably and serenely on the deck railing this afternoon, watching us as we moved around inside the house, and again reflected on this vast issue of trust. In this instance, the raccoon arrives at the same season every year, during the daytime, to get food. She is feeding her four very small babies and needs help, she thinks! But trust is an ever-increasingly interesting subject. Just this last week, on Krista Tippett's "Speaking of Faith" programme on NPR, she interviewed Paul Zak, the scientist who has almost single-handedly invented the term, neuroeconomics, all based on trust. He has discovered that trust, the social glue that holds together families, communities, societies, is dependent on oxytocin, a molecule produced in the brain. When each of us feels trusted, we produce more oxytocin, and thus we trust more too. This trustworthy behavior is of course much easier to foster in person to person (or animal, I believe!) contacts, and when corporate culture gets too distant and impersonal, we run into the financial and ethical problems we have been experiencing more and more in recent times.

As an artist, I reflected, it is not just the person to person relationships with other artists that is important. Of course, relating to artists whom one admires and respects is totally rewarding. My recent visit to the opening of The Luster of Silver silverpoint exhibition I had helped curate at the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Evansville, IN, was made far more special by the encounter, finally, face to face, with many wonderful artists with whom I had been corresponding by e-mail. I suspect the oxytocin levels must have been zooming for us all during that weekend!

Victor Koulbak, silverpoint (Image courtesy of the artist)

Nonetheless, there is another level of trust that is, I believe, terribly important for each artist. Trust in oneself and one's abilities. Innumerable times, I have embarked on a painting or drawing, particularly in silverpoint where you cannot erase anything, and suddenly felt something akin to panic: "oh, can I do this as I want? How do I accomplish it?" Experience has finally taught me to listen to a still small voice inside my head, saying, "Trust yourself. It will work out". And somehow, it does seem to. Perhaps not always splendidly, but nonetheless to an acceptable level. That sort of trust only comes with experience and self-awareness, I suspect. But it is invaluable, not only in art, but in every avenue of life. Maybe Paul Zak will find another molecule in the brain, cousin to oxytocin, that engenders trust in oneself and one's abilities!

When silence is the better path

In the dialogue between artist and the public about work created, there is often a time when silence is preferable. There was a perfect example of this premise this morning during a NPR Weekend Edition interview Scott Simon did with Israeli composer, Avner Dorman. Mr. Dorman was talking about his compositions and how he reacts when they are played by individual musicians and/or orchestras. Whilst orchestras are usually very structured in their interpretation of the music, thanks to the conductor, he remarked that he frequently stays silent when soloists begin working with his compositions. He finds that often these musicians find other aspects in his work he had not been aware of (thanks to their own life experiences), and consequently, he does not intervene to talk to them of his music until late in the process. He referred to his compositions as "living organisms", with their own independent life.

In the same way, visual art has an independent life and should be able to survive on its own, to have a dialogue with each viewer that is meaningful. In fact, many artists find it invidious that artists' statements are so often requested to accompany paintings, drawings or other media before an exhibition. The work should, ideally, be able to stand alone, allowing a dialogue with viewers that is not guided by the artist. In other words, again, silence could often be ideal. Perhaps lack of confidence on the part of many in the viewing public about what to think and what to look at or for in visual art contributes to the need for an explanatory guide to understanding the art. However, learning to trust one's inner voice or instincts is a wonderful addition to enjoying art, music and so many other things in life. It is part of defining oneself as a human being, just as the artist, in creating the work, had to remain true to his or her artistic identity.

Wheat Field with Cypresses, Vincent van Gogh, (Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum)