Thursday, January 6, 2011

still -life study


I remember having a conversation in school with the great jazz guitarist Pat Metheny. An enormously generous musician, one of the things that struck me about Pat was his seriousness and intensity about studying music. To some, I believe he came across as intimidating, or even rude. He went so far as to say, "...you need to be practicing...hard...because I'm the guy out there waiting for you..." -- or something to that effect. He then went on to discuss the way he approached the study of music...in depth.

For my part, I took Pat's attitude as a belief not only in himself, but in the individuality of artists. He was saying in essence, "If you want to be serious about this....great...but you need to be as serious as I am because I don't really want to waste my time." It's inspiring to see someone of that level not worrying about showing anybody his underwear because he knows how serious he is himself.

Today, I was talking with my friend -- an artist I greatly respect -- and we were discussing a painter many consider to be a modern master. He told me that some weeks before, a group of folks had come into his studio and told him they taken a workshop with this gentleman and had been -- shall we say -- less than enthusiastic about his attitude. They felt he was too serious and very rude. Once again, here was a great accomplished artist who was saying to his students, "If you want to study, then study in a serious way. Anything else is a waste of time..."

...anything else is not being in service to the art

For me, the study of still-life right now is pretty serious....I mean, the still-life says "either you can draw or you can't...if you can't, you're going to learn..." There are some tremendous still-life painters that have blogs here that I follow regularly, especially Carol Marine and Qiang-Huang....Their daily paintings are a constant inspiration.

...someday...anyway, here is today's offering


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