Aug
27
>
One of the best realizations you can come to as an artist is that you don’t really want to possess someone or something. You don’t want to make love to your model, take that field of flowers home with you, keep the mountains.
All you really want to do, in the end, is admire them. And your method of admiring is to look closely, maybe with your eye, maybe a camera. And you translate what you see into your art. You sculpt the model, you take a photo of the field of flowers, you paint the mountains.
That is what you really want. That is what makes you happy. don’t desire them to be yours because your method of admiration is HOW you make them yours.
You are free.
Drawing by Marty Coleman, the Napkin Dad
Check out my work and merchandise at
http://www.martycoleman.com
and
http://napkindad.blogspot.com
quote by F. H. Bradley, 1846-1924, British idealist philosopher
Aug
02
>
What you expect to see and learn vs. what you really end up seeing and learning is usually different when you go on a journey. As a matter of fact if you know everything that will happen and everything you will experience in advance, what’s the point of going, right?
When my daughters and I went to Europe a few years back, the coolest experiences were ALL things we had no idea were going to happen. They included the Monaco Grand Prix, a bull fight in a roman empire arena in the south of France, a poetry reading in Italian at the Guggenheim piazza in Venice, going to see one of the matrix movies in Germany (in german) and surfers on a river in the middle of Munich. The fun and joy and excitement of coming across those things made the vacation worth while, all by themselves!
Allow for wonder and the unexpected, it’s fun.
Drawing by Marty Coleman, the Napkin Dad
Check out my work and merchandise at
http://www.martycoleman.com
and
http://napkindad.blogspot.com
Sep
03
>
It is a fundamental discovery I made many years ago, that to be a practicing artist of any worth at all you have to admit to the world your obsessions and secrets. You have to know in advance and allow that you will have family, friends, strangers, critics, etc. who will not like them. But you have to do it anyway, it is your obligation as an artist. It is your job. Your job is to create what you really want to create. That is what the world is waiting for from you. They don’t want someone else’s art, someone else’s vision. They want YOUR art and YOUR vision.
You may think that people who do ‘pretty pictures’ escape this scrutiny, but that is not true. For every artist obsessed with sunsets and puppy dogs or other sweet things, there are people who diss them, who put them out of the art category and into the schlock crap category. And that artist has to know that and allow it and keep doing what they want to do. It is the only way for an artist to get close to their passion and if an artist doesn’t get close to his or her passion, they will not create art for very long.
Apr
22
>
Hiding things makes so much sense, is so compellingly important to the addict, the
secret bearer, the flawed one. But in the end the secret will find it’s way out. It
may not show itself directly, but something wrong in the world will. Maybe it will be
anger and frustration with family or friends that isn’t deserved and doesn’t make
sense. Maybe it will be escapist behavior that threatens yourself and those around you,
or it might be an out and out full exposure of the secret when you least expect it.
But however the secret comes out, directly or not, holding onto it will affect your
life for the worse, not the better in the long run.
One of the best realizations you can come to as an artist is that you don’t really want to possess someone or something. You don’t want to make love to your model, take that field of flowers home with you, keep the mountains. 
