[2021-07-22] On being an artist
Today, Chris and I visited the special Rembrandt exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. It's an impressive display, featuring not only Rembrandt's works but those of many of his Dutch contemporaries as well.
Though Rembrandt was a master drawer, painter and printmaker, who produced portraits, landscapes, historical scenes, animal studies and more, what struck me most today was his portrait painting. The detail he captured in his portraits, especially in the faces of his subjects, is striking.
Also today, I read James Clear's weekly newsletter (it comes out on Thursdays), which included this quote from writing teacher and The Artist's Way author Julia Cameron:
It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.
Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.
By most accounts, Rembrandt became a very good artist, renowned in the 17th century and still to this day. Though he may have had some raw talent, he was no doubt a beginner when he started a three-year apprenticeship, at age 13, with history painter Jacob van Swanenburg in Leiden within the Dutch Republic.
Cameron's assertion that it's impossible to get better and look good at the same time reminded me of something that Maya Angelou wrote:
I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics—New York critics as a rule—who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.
Rembrandt, Maya Angelou, Julia Cameron and every great artist likely worked and struggled at their craft, spending countless hours perfecting their works of art.
I struggle too. Like Maya Angelou, I work at the language in my blog posts. I fret over what to write about. I doubt that what I have to say has any merit. When I begin writing, I sometimes don't know where I'm going.
But something emerges, because something has to emerge—such is my commitment.
Not every post is great, or at least great for all my readers. But every post I write elicits a reaction from someone. In that way, it's like looking at a hundred paintings in a gallery: each of us will like many, hate some, and love only a few.
I am not a Rembrandt or a Maya Angelou or a Julia Cameron. I'm just an artist who is willing to sacrifice looking good in order to get better over time.
