Just a hobby

Are you a journeyman artist or just a hobby dilettante?

The reason I ask is a conversation I had with Charles of Charleston the other day. We were talking about how so many artists wait for inspiration to hit them and wind up waiting for days. (Weeks/months/years)

If you are really a working artist you can't waste time waiting for an idea to come along. That idea may have decided to visit Disneyland and there you are waiting by the side of the road while that idea is off riding on the Log Flume.

Inspiration is just one of many excuses artists use for not working. Art can't be taught.

Yes, I know there are schools and classes and while they are very good and might in some cases be helpful, art has to be earned. It is earned with sweat equity. The daily grind of getting up, coming to, sorting your equipment, squeezing time, (The kids need school supplies and the dog is barfing on the rug and The Thing On The Couch hasn't turned off football since the middle of August, your mother is coming on Sunday) and you still have to find time to work!

You want to be an artist, you have to work at it daily. Those skills you admire so much don't come in a kit you can buy on Amazon, they come from doing it wrong a thousand times and then doing it wrong another thousand times and then doing it wrong one more time until it finally looks right.

I have it easy, I am a photographer and I have a wonderful machine right in front of my face which is on most days a lot smarter than I am, but it don't use those smarts unless I tell it what to do.

That means I have to use the camera day in and day out until I know where every bell and whistle is and what every adjustment does and why I should do this instead of that and why it might take some tweaking in the computer even after I get it out of the camera.

And let me tell you finding something new and inspiring every day is not a job for sissies. But it has to be done. The camera is just a paper weight unless it is used.

How much harder is it for artists in other disciplines who have to learn how to make paint and brushes do what they want when arthritic fingers would just as soon lift another cup of coffee grab a blanket off the bed and see what new outrage the politicians have done today.

Just last weekend I was at the Blackberry Fest doing some outdoor street photography. Takes steady nerves, a quick eye and complete knowledge of how the camera works. Get the wrong guy in frame and you get your assets kicked cause he is out on parole and doesn't want his face where his PO can see that he isn't at the Food Cupboard passing out apples to hungry chillen.

And how 'bout women? Well, yes as a general rule I like them a lot, as I may have mentioned from time to time, but in the Me Too culture, you can get labeled a perv and get your assets kicked by the boyfriend who is nine and half feet tall and just out on parole and ducking his PO and would like to stay out of jail so that he can make sure his honey isn't letting some other bee sip all her nectar.

And even if the boyfriend isn't nine and a half feet tall, the perv label has some heavy weight these days and you do want to stay out of court so those brilliant pictures can be shown at a public venue and not as part of a prison art show traveling around the country to raise money so that you can buy smokes at the canteen to bribe off the nine and a half foot tall guy who wants you to be his honey while he is waiting to get released and go back to his honey and you don't want that so you have to be careful. 

 

Then too you don't really want to catch people with their mouths full, or open or with their pants hanging on their hip bones or with something nasty they accidentally sat in while taking a break from all of the festing. But you do want to catch the unique, miracle moments which happen while you are out walking around and aren't you glad you brought your camera along.

Like kids doing pole vault demonstrations

Which there actually was at the fest and I had my camera and I got a shot or two, but I had to know all sorts of things cause you see pole vaulters have just one or two seconds of high drama in between running and thinking and handling that pole so you have to do all of the calculations and setting the settings and holding your breath so that you don't shake at just the important moment and what about all of that blue sky which will throw your exposure all to hell and gone?

But if you wait to be inspired when do you get in the practice which teaches you how do do all of the things which have to be done in a split second when the miracle happens?

You have to work at it, work at it every day, work at even when you feel like what that dog just did to the rug, when the kids are screaming and The Thing on the Couch is whining and the whole world is going to hell. You work not because you are inspired, but because you are an artist and work is what makes great possible.