How not to abandon the art world
By: Marco Maroccolo
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Growth, Art, Creative Process, Life Lessons

“Work.”

“Work, work, work, work, work, work…”

After about 30 seconds during which the painter continued, undaunted, to recite the word like a mantra, I started to worry.

He proceeded for more than a minute, which seemed to me like an eternity. When he stopped, he looked at me attentively. He seemed to be checking if I had understood. I hadn’t understood.

That minute, dominated by that single word, I came to understand only some years later, after meeting many artists and many beginners.

At the time, I was young and making my first steps in the art world. I don’t remember how, but I managed to interview this well-known Greek painter who had been living for years in the same Italian city as me. The question that solicited that strange response had been the last, perhaps rather bland one, which came at the end of our conversation: what did it mean to him to be an artist.

In the following years, many artists have responded to this question in many different ways, yet one thing consistently came up: the large amount of work required. Why?

A reason for this is described clearly by David Baylis and Ted Orland in their excellent book “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking”:

“The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about — and lots of it! […] The rest is largely a matter of perseverance.”

Work and perseverance: two keywords in the world of art.

Many believe that inspiration and talent are enough to make an artist. Although an appealing idea, this is unfortunately incorrect — at least in the real world.

Even Goethe, who had an exact idea about art, once said:

“In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.”

And it’s true: art, even if it’s borne from the enthusiasm and exists in the world of ideas, must inevitably confront reality. It is here that perseverance comes into play and is fundamental in helping you maintain a high level of hard work. If you persevere, a tiny fraction of your creations will have the chance to become significant and meaningful. But above all, perseverance will help you not to abandon everything and — like my grandfather once said to me — find yourself a real job.

From this emerges our first lesson:

From the moment you decide to dedicate your life to art, you must work very hard, without losing interest and passion, and always give your absolute best every day, even though not everything you create will be a masterpiece.

Yes, because very often beginner artists are not satisfied with their first work, this can discourage them and instill in them the erroneous idea that they are absent of talent. Many, because of this, even renounce their dedication to art. Is there a way to avoid this?

Years at the Conservatory helped me understand something that is not obvious: doing something well requires a long and demanding period of practice. Simple, right? If only.

The first years of studying an instrument, in my case the piano, are usually spent playing exercises, scales, arpeggios. Every day, for several hours. Always. And if you’re learning the piano, you’re lucky because a wrong note on a piano is much less grating than one on a string instrument (ask the parents of a child who is learning the violin).

Thankfully, a musical education also involves teaching simple, easy-listening pieces to show the student that music is not all effort and suffering. With time, lots of work — and perseverance — you learn to play more complicated pieces gradually. But those exercises, scales, and arpeggios remain even for those who, after years, have finished their course of learning. They remain even for the masters and the concert performers.

As time goes on, the student improves their technique and musical interpretation and starts to apply their music style. Still, the necessary ability to move your fingers on your instrument, balancing execution and interpretation with perfect ease, is only possible after a healthy dose of constant practice.

This simple truth is sometimes not apparent when learning other disciplines: an art-lover who signs up to a sculpture or painting class often expects results after only a few lessons.

So, another lesson to note:

your first two creations, whether they be terracotta pots, watercolors, or photographs, will not be a Mozart sonata. They are the practices that prepare you for the Mozart sonata.

They don’t yet represent your vision of art. Above all, they are not indications of your artistic worth. They are practices. Treat them as such.

Let’s continue with another topic: Selection.

Even if you, a beginner artist, after so much effort and perseverance, accept your first two creations as practices, the day will one day come when you will create something that you like. And after this, you will make another one. Amazing. And so on. Now you have ten. Twenty. Fantastic, you’re ready for an exhibition. No. Wrong. Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that.

Of those ten or twenty pieces, you must choose one or two. No more. You need to recognize which ones deserve public attention, and to do that requires time and experience. This, too, is something that you must understand and accept. Not all your work represents the best that you can do. Remember? Most of them are practices. No pianist sits down at the piano and tells you, “Now I’m going to play you a practice.” Because neither you nor anyone listening likes exercises, scales, and arpeggios. You must only show your best to the world. You should only play the Mozart sonata.

Photographers are more aware of this. They were already aware of it at the time of film photography, and now, with digital photography, they are certain. This is because digital photography has increased to an unreasonable extent the photographer’s capacity to produce, and the fruit of their labors — the marvelous pictures we see in exhibitions or in books — convinces us of their artistic superiority. It amazes us that they don’t mess up a single shot, that every photo is magnificent. How do they do it?

In one day of work, a photographer can take tens or hundreds of shots. When they return home, they upload them all to their editing software, start deleting the worst ones — usually, there are a lot of them — and then they choose which ones they like the most. To do this, they use various techniques. Photography books and the internet are full of suggestions. Some methods suggest assigning a score to each photo and going through several selection stages until you reach a small number of images — the best ones. It’s a process that can take days, weeks, even months.

You must do the same with your paintings and sculptures. I know that it takes some of the poetry away from the creative act and that it can be difficult and painful to discard some of your pieces but, in reality, it’s an essential part of your work. Writers (they’re artists, too) know this process by the friendly expression: “Kill your darlings.”

This is a very appropriate definition, which I found published on the Masterclass website:

“Kill your darlings is a common piece of advice given by experienced writers. You kill your darlings when you decide to get rid of an unnecessary storyline, character, or sentences in a piece of creative writing — elements you may have worked hard to create, but that must be removed for the sake of your overall story.”

And there you have the lesson: no matter how much you care for your ten, twenty, or thirty terracotta pots, watercolors, photographs, or paragraphs, they don’t represent the best of what you have produced, what you can produce, or what you will produce in the future. Of these, only a tiny part can be saved. You must learn to recognize that part. And you can do it. You must do it. Because once you’ve selected your best pieces, you will be ready to show them to the world.

I do not wish to simplify such a rich and complex topic as that of creating art. The work, the perseverance, the selection; all that may not even be enough to make you a great artist. But maybe it is. One thing is for sure, though: to become a great artist, you must not be overcome by the difficulties you encounter at the beginning of your journey, particularly since these will accompany you throughout your entire artistic life.

If you manage to do this, then that thought that tells you that you are not a good artist will, every day, get further and further away. Not by much: that thought is never too far away, even from the great masters. You must get used to its presence; the important thing is to keep it at a safe distance.

And you can accomplish it, with a lot of “Work, work, work…”