It seems a bit vain to quote myself instead of a famous artist on my home page but I am very excited about coming up with the idea.
Every act of Art is a pirouette on a wobbly stone.
I was drawing some stones sitting one on another as I had been for a couple of days, noticing light and shadow, colour and shape. I began to think about gravity that holds the stones in place but also the effort in the balance to resist gravity so they don’t tumble down. Then I was reminded of how light a ballerina’s movements can look when she is actually using all her strength to defy gravity. Hence the phrase which I instantly loved. It felt like a defiant victory. Not a victory over gravity but over resistance.
Artists feel this resistance all the time. It is a constant fight to create art. We do not sit for hours constantly painting. Besides the admin, like keeping up a web page, we struggle to over come procrastination, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear that what people have said about us is true and plenty of other fears I am sure. We also have to fight artists block, which is similar to writers block, and often we just hope the the flow state or our muse will just turn up.
There are things we artist do to overcome the resistance, like just showing up and keeping on trying, dealing with our inner fears and seeking out the next adventure through disciplined practice. I will be talking about this with another artist, Donna Drouin, in our next Art Dust Podcast if you want to know more.
When we finally manage to do any art it is a victory. A magnificent pirouette on a wobbly stone. It is wobbling precariously and you can’t pirouette for long. We fall back to earth again and start the struggle all over. But for one glorious moment, that artist’s mark or movement or sound, is a victory shout.
