Wednesday's Word: Question

What question do you want to ask?

Found some cardboard, carried it home, painted on it.

Dear friends,

I’m sorry this letter is late (it’s Thursday), but I didn’t manage to write it last night. I was going to write it this morning, but P’s Rocksteady Concert finished later than I’d anticipated. So here we are at 4pm.

As a creator, do you have worries? Do you wonder if you’re not good enough? Do you wonder if you have anything important to say? Do you worry that the things you make don’t look like the things you want them to? Is the image in your head different from the thing on the paper?

When I visited the Georgia O’Keeffe museum last year, I was warmly heartened to hear her say this on a film that was playing:

‘I can imagine myself being a much better painter and no one paying any attention to me at all. But it happens that the things that I’ve been doing have been in touch with my time so people have liked it. But I could have been much better and nobody noticed it. Much better, I’ll say, as a painter. You see a painter is one thing and a person in a way is another thing. Some people seem to be luckier than others. I don’t know maybe it’s because I’ve taken hold of anything that came along that I wanted.'

• Georgia O’Keeffe in Perry Miller Adato’s film, Georgia O’Keeffe

I think O’Keeffe is saying here that if she had been better at the craft of painting, she wouldn’t have been such a great artist (or person). I was encouraged to hear her say she ‘could have been much better, as a painter.’ I took that to mean that the ‘craft’ of painting, wasn’t as important as the voice, the idea, the concept, the question of the artist. I was heartened because, as a painter, I’m not brilliant. That held me back for a while, well, for many years, because I am not a naturalistic painter, I’m not particularly good at making pictures that look like the thing I’m painting. I realised very recently that I could probably learn to make more ‘accurate’ paintings of things (any craft can be learned with enough time, effort, opportunity and materials), but that actually, I wasn’t very interested in 'accurate.’ I can take photos already, why would I need to learn how to make naturalistic paintings, that it’s what I’m interested in. It took me many years to learn that I didn’t need to write a novel, like many of my colleagues at university. I LOVE novels, but maybe making one wasn’t for me?

“If you know what you want to do and you do it, that’s the work of a craftsman. If you begin with a question and use it to guide an adventure of discovery, that’s the work of the artist.”

―Rick Rubin,The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Rubin makes an important distinction here and for this letter it makes sense. Of course, you can do both: you can be both a craftswoman and an artist. The craft is the tool you use to express your art or to ask your question. Many artists, I think, come to be artists through craft and others remain craftswomen (or men). I’m interested in asking questions or discovering hidden or most of all interesting ideas. So, I can no longer deny it, I am an artist.

What is your question? And what craft might it be useful to learn (writing, web design, fashion design, painting, embroidery, organising, cooking for a crowd, planning)?

I’ll see some of you tonight, everyone else, have a think!

With love,

Deb x

BONUS A Tiny To do for this week to get your wonder muscles working: write down a question or idea that you would like to ask or express.