So I’ve been thinking about some information that I’ve been reading about on artbusiness.com by Alan Bamberger. He’s an art consultant whose site gives some very useful and straight forward ideas on being an artist, with insights on what makes for success in the marketplace and how to get there. One of the exercises he gives is to have you as an artist track what you are doing and to understand why you are doing it and what makes your work successful. Here’s some questions he gives and answers that I came back with:

When do you make art? “Everyday or most everyday.”

Is it at a regular time? “No, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening and sometimes at night.”

Is it after a specific inspiration? “I’m usually inspired by a pattern of light, it can be the way light falls through the blinds, or how it bounces off the wall when I am at the pool in the early morning, or how it reflects off off a river or creek, or how it is filtered through thick branches or brush. This is the starting point, and then from there I allow the painting to tell me where to go next-where it it remain as an examination of light and pattern or it becomes a backdrop for my emotional landscape where my unconsicous floats up and I indicate some of those images.”

How do you start? “By looking at what I have been doing and looking to see what looks like it needs work, or if I am starting something new, I will look at some photographs I have taken of light, pattern and shapes and see where I want to begin. Then I usually turn the radio on to NPR as the background, or classical music or I listen to my ipod.

“What do you listen to? “Answered above.”

How does your art evolve? “By painting, by paying attention to what I am feeling and experiencing while I am painting and by looking at other artists work, sometimes by reading or listening to poetry.”

Are you intentional right from the start or does direction materialize as you work? “I’m intentional to the extent that I start with something concrete that affects me ongoing (light, pattern, reflections, color) and evolutionary in that starting point is like background music that allows my unconscious to arise and be known.”

What makes your art effective and why? “I think that my most effective work comes from me allowing myself to trust in my process and to give in to the process which means a certain amount of giving up control, not of the technique, but more of allowing my intuition to be in charge instead of thinking that while I am working that my cognitive process has to be in charge. The end product is most effective when I have given into the process with full conviction.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 6:56 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.