Welcome to Artists on Art— the space for conversations on creativity!
Launch day has arrived!
Artists On Art grew out of my interest in understanding how artists really tick. I am curious about what motivates artists to create day after day, and what they consider to be the source of their inspiration.
I want to get closer to the nub of how individuals approach creativity. What is it to be an artist? Why does it even matter?
In my opening post I thought I’d say a few words on how I got to this point.
As an adolescent, my artistic and musical talents were perfectly balanced by my lack of application. I wafted through school in a dream, barely aware of the earth under my feet. My engineering degree was useful in so far as it taught me not only to be aware of the earth but to understand why I was always being pulled towards it with a force of 9.81 times my body mass.
I spent a lost decade knuckling down to a job as a mechanical engineer while repairing, driving and dreaming about cars in my spare time. At age 27, I was jolted awake when I attended my first evening painting class. My next jolt came soon after, on hearing my mother’s attempt at Schubert’s G-flat Impromptu on her piano; I raced out and bought a piano, and a guitar for good measure (discovering Schubert won’t make you forget the Rolling Stones).
Since then I’ve been painting, writing, designing, composing, singing and playing while trying to break my dependency on engineering as a career. And teaching myself, mostly.
Over the three decades since my awakening, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering on art. I realise now that I’ve done that mostly in a bubble: introverted by nature; never as part of an academic cohort; and predominantly working alone rather than collaborating. I’ve not spent enough time talking with other artists about what they do, why they do it, what they think about it all.
This blog site is intended as an environment for conversations on art. I will share my own thoughts, explore projects of my own and of others, interview my fellow artists, and encourage feedback and discussion from like-minded souls. Who knows where it may lead? As a friend said to me recently, ‘You need to open up the doors for anything to happen!’
So, please stay with me for a while and see where it goes. Please share freely with anyone you think might be interested. And if you’re inclined, feel welcome to join the conversation!
He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year,
Coming home to a place he’d never been before…
John Denver, Colorado Rocky Mountain High