No Time Like the Present - Perspectives No. 167
No Time Like the Present
Perspectives from The Artist's Road  A Moment Before Now Mixed Watermedia © Mark Mehaffey “When I die and go to heaven, I want to spend the first million years painting - so I can get to the bottom of the subject.” - Winston Churchill
In our interview with Mark Mehaffey - (Members revisit: Voices of Experience: Mark Mehaffey), Mehaffey shared with us his philosophy toward making art and his work ethic. "I firmly believe that inspiration is a direct result of perspiration. Work, work hard, work hard everyday and inspiration will find you.” He reports that he is usually at work in his studio by 7:30 or 8 am every morning. He is a living example of the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell described in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success
 . The basic idea behind the rule is that if one puts in a sincere and focused effort, one can not only master but excel at about anything in 10,000 hours. This is not always such an easy proposition. Finding time to be in the studio, to focus on painting, to allow ourselves to become the conduits of creativity can be a constant struggle. We have recently been enjoying Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 1996 book, Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention  , in which the author shares his extensive 30 years of research into human creativity, including excerpts from the interviews he conducted with 91 exceptional individuals. According to Csikszentmihalyi, If we want to learn anything, we must pay attention to the information to be learned, and attention is a limited resource. "The point is, a great deal of our limited supply of attention is committed to the tasks of surviving from one day to the next. Over an entire lifetime, the amount of attention left over for learning a symbolic domain—such as music or physics (or art!)—is a fraction of this already small amount” The good news is that there are many paths to a life of creativity, and if one cannot have the ideal, then one can carve out space and time customized to suit the situation. The essential required condition is a regular schedule for art making that is inviolate—that does not give way to any other concerns or needs. It is not even the amount of hours per day that one can put in, but the focus in the time one has. Even if one can only find a single, uninterrupted, private hour a day to create, that can be enough to build upon over time. Devotion to a creative schedule and faith in the value of the effort creates satisfaction and success. And, curiously, when we are “in the zone”, thinking only of our love for what we are doing, Time suddenly and quietly vanishes. |
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Member ContentFree ContentThe Artist's Road Store Nocturnes - A Primer on Night Painting Filled with inspirational examples by the masters of nightime painting, this little book is sure to fire up your creative energies. Never tried painting at night? We show you how it's done with a step-by-step-oil demo and a tale of night painting in the wilds of Rocky Mountain National Park. The Primer on Night Painting - Nocturnes is a 7 x 7" PDF download with 40 pages of text and images. It includes a gallery of paintings by masters of the nocturne, information to inspire and encourage you in your plein air nocturne painting, an illustrated step-by-step demo and tips for working in pastel and oil. Also available in a softcover edition. Check out the tools and other products that we use in our own art and travels in The Artist's Road Store. We only offer things for sale that we enthusiastically believe in.
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Voices of Experience:Richard K. Blades
ing Watercolors
Nocturne Notes
Inspiration in Monet's Gardens
The Watercolor Medium
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