It is true that one can train oneself out of oneself. The Beginner's Mind: A mentor from long ago, a big shot bureaucrat in several presidential administrations, retired early to take up art. I watched as he proceeded. By the time he began, the habits he had to form in order to have had his career as a bureaucrat, were cemented. Nobody ever strove harder than him to make art, but those habits stood in the way of his ever being able to. A part of his efforts to mentor me was to counsel me that if I wanted to "be an artist," I had to have income, which meant employment. Watching him struggle showed me the trap, showed me that his counsel was exactly how not to proceed. Through the years I had odd jobs, painting houses, mowing lawns, honest labor, but nothing that would undo or interfere with the Beginner's Mind.
Once, a few years back I adjourned to my next door neighbors' home for Christmas dinner. On my arrival, one of their little boys, about 3 1/2 - 4 years old, grabbed my hand and exclaimed "I got cars!" So I went upstairs with him to his play room. He dug into a box full of toy cars and took some out and did some things with them. As I watched, I could see that the results of what he did with the cars suggested to him what he might do next. Then I saw that, instead of finishing anything, he abandoned the operation. The Beginner's Mind. Monet told someone that he left a painting when he reached a point where he didn't know what else to do with it.
With that in mind, it might've seemed counter-intuitive to me when I found that so-called "Abstract Expressionist" painters like de Kooning and Rothko exhorted younger artists to study the masters. But I had also encountered the idea, attributed to Picasso, that good artists copy: great artists steal. So, the trick is not to lose oneself in the shadow of the masters, the teachers, by imitating their techniques, but to absorb their lessons and transpose them by filtering them through one's own sensibilities. The result is something unique, something like one's hand writing, freshening and renewing the context, the tradition, by adding the next sentence, paragraph, chapter to the tradition. The Beginner's Mind is nonnegotiably requisite for that.
This is incredibly cool, and very useful!! Thank you!!
It is true that one can train oneself out of oneself. The Beginner's Mind: A mentor from long ago, a big shot bureaucrat in several presidential administrations, retired early to take up art. I watched as he proceeded. By the time he began, the habits he had to form in order to have had his career as a bureaucrat, were cemented. Nobody ever strove harder than him to make art, but those habits stood in the way of his ever being able to. A part of his efforts to mentor me was to counsel me that if I wanted to "be an artist," I had to have income, which meant employment. Watching him struggle showed me the trap, showed me that his counsel was exactly how not to proceed. Through the years I had odd jobs, painting houses, mowing lawns, honest labor, but nothing that would undo or interfere with the Beginner's Mind.
Once, a few years back I adjourned to my next door neighbors' home for Christmas dinner. On my arrival, one of their little boys, about 3 1/2 - 4 years old, grabbed my hand and exclaimed "I got cars!" So I went upstairs with him to his play room. He dug into a box full of toy cars and took some out and did some things with them. As I watched, I could see that the results of what he did with the cars suggested to him what he might do next. Then I saw that, instead of finishing anything, he abandoned the operation. The Beginner's Mind. Monet told someone that he left a painting when he reached a point where he didn't know what else to do with it.
With that in mind, it might've seemed counter-intuitive to me when I found that so-called "Abstract Expressionist" painters like de Kooning and Rothko exhorted younger artists to study the masters. But I had also encountered the idea, attributed to Picasso, that good artists copy: great artists steal. So, the trick is not to lose oneself in the shadow of the masters, the teachers, by imitating their techniques, but to absorb their lessons and transpose them by filtering them through one's own sensibilities. The result is something unique, something like one's hand writing, freshening and renewing the context, the tradition, by adding the next sentence, paragraph, chapter to the tradition. The Beginner's Mind is nonnegotiably requisite for that.
💙 Luminous living shadow. ⛅
Thanks for all the tips!