Creative Cogitation

So lately I have found myself mak­ing moves, which has the accoun­tant in me is scream­ing, “This is fis­cally irre­spon­si­ble. “  The artist in me is telling the accoun­tant, “put a sock in it.”

It started with the Biennale.

The accoun­tant in me:  “$8,000 in esti­mated expenses?  Are you kid­ding me?  We don’t have the money.”

The artist:  “Every­one (who mat­ters to me) is telling me I must go; it’s a ticket to the show.  I am going.”

The accoun­tant in me:  “But it’s $8,000.”

The artist:  “I will find a way to make this happen…”

You get the idea.

The artist won on the Flo­rence Bien­nale, but the ben­e­fit of attend­ing the Flo­rence Bien­nale is not finan­cially obvi­ous.  The artist still sees the intan­gi­ble ben­e­fits I did receive.  The accoun­tant is still grum­bling. What were the benefits?

• The net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with like minded artists are unbe­liev­able. All par­tic­i­pants passed through the same ring of fire that I did and came out at the other side.  The Bien­nale is a band pass fil­ter that indi­cates a level of com­mit­ment to your art.
• Some artists faced far more dif­fi­culty than I did get­ting there-risking their lives, jail…  for some other artists get­ting there was just another day on the job, but for me get­ting there was an accomplishment.
• After talk­ing to many of these other like minded indi­vid­u­als my vision of my art has expanded.
• I did it with­out wind­ing up home­less (I am absolutely sure for many of you read­ing this, that fear is one of your fears too).  I con­quered my fear.

What am I talk­ing about then?  A par­a­digm shift.  I per­ceive my world dif­fer­ently. The accoun­tant is all doom and gloom, fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity.  React­ing to the down econ­omy by want to draw all resources inward and con­serve them until the sun comes out again. The artist is telling the accoun­tant, “You have no vision.  Besides, look around lit­tle accoun­tant dude, the world is cur­rently full of peo­ple who fol­lowed all the rules and wound up bank­rupt anyway…”

The accoun­tant in me cer­tain has its place, don’t get me wrong.  The accoun­tant knew it was going to cost 8 grand to get to the Bien­nale. The accoun­tant can orga­nize a plan.  Know­ing what you need to accom­plish some­thing is use­ful too. But I needed to cur­tail the accountant’s pow­ers to some extent as the accoun­tant is fully aware of the worst case sce­nario and plans for it, but really, does it usu­ally get that bad?

Any­way, so today I read some­one else’s blog and the words for this change in my per­spec­tive clicked.  I thought, “Oh. That is what is going on.”  When I cre­ate, I cre­ate.  The whole process from begin­ning to end unfolds with­out regard for worldly dis­trac­tions; I have a vision and it will be expressed in its com­plete form.  But when I am not paint­ing I respond to the world reac­tively.  I don’t know about you but these last few years have given me a lot to react to.

The shift: What I have started to do is apply the cre­ative process to my life.  Rather than respond­ing to deeply depress­ing state of affairs in the national econ­omy, I am mov­ing on.  I have no power over the deeply depress­ing state of affairs in the national econ­omy, why am I giv­ing it power over me.  I no longer want to be a flakey artist when I grow up-I will be a flakey artist when I grow up.  It’s the dif­fer­ence between a dream and a vision.

The area that I have always been weak at is mar­ket­ing me.  My mis­sion this year is to address that defect head on.  Since I have been unable to do it by myself, I am buy­ing the tools I need to make this hap­pen.  I am tak­ing classes, and doing my home­work and embrac­ing the idea that for a while I will have to spend more time on this stuff than paint­ing. Yes I am spend­ing money on some­thing other than the art-for me it is a lot of money.

But I real­ize do need to keep paint­ing to be ready to take advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties as needs arise.

Oh, and I have given the accoun­tant another thing to squawk about.  Remem­ber that Bien­nale net­work­ing I was talk­ing about?  That net­work has pre­sented the oppor­tu­nity for a mere $1000 to show in NY and get the full court press of pub­lic­ity from NY Arts Mag­a­zine. It’s the pub­lic­ity that is the thing. Oh yeah, lit­tle account­ing dude is scream­ing.  The artist is say­ing, “Shut up, obvi­ously I have work to do.”

What are your thoughts?

Yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

Fol­low Jake Beck­man Online!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.