Be Hip or Hippocampus?

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Now that we are back in the studio from teaching our Abiquiu, New Mexico plein air oil painting workshop, we are marveling at how simple life was just a while ago. For a week, students and teachers alike lived, breathed and slept art. To be sure, everyone worked hard, endured the bright sun and intense wind, and fell into bed each night exhausted from very full days, but each morning there were smiles all around at the prospect of another happy day doing little else but what we love with our friends and fellow artists gathered around.

When immersed in an intensive learning situation like a workshop or seminar, the necessity of abandoning all other considerations to focus solely on the task at hand is an absolute joy. In a time when the ill-conceived notion of “multi-tasking” has been promoted as the hip path to productivity, people are rediscovering that concentrating on a single task is liberating and engages the creative mind completely. Not only that, but when we learn in a focused …