PicturedbyDesign | New York Fashion and Architecture

Hey Guys,

I’d like to say that I’m back, that I apologize for being MIA for so long and that I’ll be updating the blog regularly again, but I don’t know if that’s the truth. I’ve been preoccupied with too many unimportant things lately, and I’m working on fixing that, but there’s no telling how well I’d do. But I am trying, so time will tell.

In the meantime, I have this working theory regarding the importance of understanding ourselves and self-introspection as a vital part of our creative development as artists.

Basically, there are two major aspects that goes into making art: the technical expertise in our chosen medium(s), and what we choose to express through our work. Only the latter is required in the beginning as a catalyst to starting an artistic life, but there’s an undeniable symbiotic relationship between ‘what we want to do’ and ‘how we do it’ from there on out. Without technical expertise, the art will never advance to a stage where it is recognizable as a piece of artwork, at least by common standards. However, I think there is another level beyond simply having the creativity and achieving a certain level of expertise in your medium; the level where you understand what you are making, why you are making it, and how you can reproduce more of it – not with the same physicality but the same meaning as an unifier.

It’s my opinion that too many artists get to the apex of their level of technical expertise, then spends way too much time attempting to perfect their technical knowledge, or worse, attempting to jump-start their creative battery by trying to find another creative outlet, instead of looking inwards to lead themselves to self-discovery. In the majority of books on art that I’ve read (although admittedly I haven’t read that many, despite being a voracious reader, because I try to preserve my objectivity in my creative process), the authors prefer to focus on the technical side of the equation, while barely brushing on the creative side, and the readers (especially artists who are in the formative stage of their creative lives) suffer as a result.

In my opinion, an artist can reach his/her artistic potential by going into a phase of deep introspection when they’ve reached their technical apex – my definition being the point at which when they don’t have to actively consider their medium when they have what they want to create in mind. At that point, if they find what fuels their creative drive, they can then expand on that greatly, both within and without their original medium, and getting artist’s block is much less of a possibility.

Let me know if any of it doesn’t make sense/there’s an argument against any points, as I’m not a psychologist nor an expert in art education. Everything I’ve said stems from observations of myself and other creatives.