How does the artwork of others that you are exposed to affect your work, and how do you use the inspiration you derive from what you see when you create?
Because we are exposed to so much art, especially if we look to the art of others for inspiration, we are unavoidably influenced by these outside sources. How we filter that influence, how it affects our artistic voice and our motivation to create has both its good and bad aspects. In this episode, I chat with my better half, Brett Varon about how we’ve both dealt with this throughout our lives, and how artists can recognize when the influence stifles one’s unique voice versus when it’s a useful jumping off point for artistic exploration. So come join the conversation and see if you can divine how you use what you see and learn through the observation of other people’s art.
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Credits:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
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Transcript (AI generated. no corrections/editing. Apologies for the copious errors. When the budget allows, we’ll get these fixed.
And that’s something I’ve explored over the years. Just bring something of ourselves to the table as opposed to just imitating, you know, a technique in order to get paid.
Welcome, all my lovely creative friends. Thank you so much for joining me here on the Sage Arts podcast. This is Sage, and I am joined today by my much better half, Brett Veron. He’s going to cohost with me today, which means we’re going to discuss discuss things together rather than just a straight up interview so you can just hear the kind of conversations back and forth we’ve had. We did this before episode three of the podcasts. We are recording this a little bit differently than last time because we had a myriad of technical issues. So he is cozily ensconced in his studio at the opposite end of the house. So we’re actually doing this in the evening after a day of work. And because of the evening and it’s after work. We have adult beverages today. So what do you have to drink?
I have an IPA beverage. You like them? Hoppy beers? Yeah, the hoppy beer is good. I don’t wreck regular beers.
So I like to make my own liqueurs because I can make them with little or no sugar and lower the fat content because I have issues with fat because I have all kinds of issues. But I made what I call Peppermint Patty, which is like an Irish cream, but I use peppermint instead of what is it? Coconut or whatnot? In Irish cream. So I’m trying that today. It’s a little thinner than
I’m oh, I want some. You didn’t tell me you were having that.
I’m sorry. We’re at the opposite ends of the house. Different stuff happening in different ends of the house. It’s good. It’s okay. Well, of course I shouldn’t be saying it’s okay. I keep forgetting. So we both ended up having COVID at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately, that’s what I was sick with. I don’t think I brought up specifically, but I did lose my sense of taste, and it hasn’t quite come back yet. So I keep thinking things just don’t taste as good as usual because they have no flavor. You’re all about taste and stuff. I’m such a fan of bummer. It has been such a bummer. So it’s not just a cold. I’m telling you, the only thing I lost was my sense of wanting to get up out of bed. It knocked you down for a little while. Yeah, but we’re both doing much better. I think my voice sounds a lot better than it did the last two podcasts when I was really trying to struggle through it. But in any case, we thought we’d talk a bit about a conversation we had the other day, which primarily had to do with where we get our inspiration from and primarily in relation to how much input we get from other people’s artwork via social media. Or the social circles we’re in, or in Brett’s case, the work that he does. Brett works in animation, if you didn’t get that introduction from the previous episode, working for Nickelodeon at the moment. Right. And so he deals with animation artists and background artists and character artists and all kinds of artists, is one himself, of course. So we get a lot of input from outside sources. I think for most people, the majority of it is social media. We’re bombarded with outside visual input these days.
Yeah. And I think it’s a really wonderful thing to be able to see and get inspiration from all this great work out there. But at the same time, I think it has its downsides where you’re seeing so much stuff. How much of what we’re seeing is influencing what we’re doing? How much of what we see day to day eeks into our work, consciously or unconsciously. So that’s the question I want to pose for you, the listeners. How does the artwork of others that you are exposed to affect your work? And how do you use the inspiration you derive from what you see when you create? Because there are pros and cons to being exposed to so much art all the time. And I think we just need to be aware of how it influences our own work and how we use what we see and learn through our own observations. And so we had started this conversation about why you shouldn’t or should draw inspiration from artwork that you see out in the world.
So, Brett, your initial thoughts were that you love looking at other artwork and whatnot, but it doesn’t really affect your personal artwork very much. Yeah. Well, I’m glad that appears to be the case. Right, right. When I was a kid, my dad was very discouraging when it came to copying anything, and I think I naturally gravitated towards that, too. But as a kid, all kids, they just do they just make drawings out of their imagination, and then you go to school and you get educated with all the tools and whatnot. So he was always like, yeah, don’t copy other people’s drawings. So his concern was that if you copied other people, you would not be able to find your own voice. Exactly. Or you would lose your voice. Lose your voice. Yeah. Oh, it’s gone. Once you draw like somebody else, your natural way of doing things just evaporates or something. That’s just not the case. So when you were younger, it’s not like you didn’t watch cartoons. Yeah, I watched tons of cartoons.
So you’re still exposed to all of that artwork and all these different styles, but you were discouraged from actually working in the same styles that you were seeing. So where did you find your style? I mean, how did you develop it as a child when you didn’t have any other resources because you weren’t being taught animation or cartoon drawing or whatnot, when you were young, right? Yeah. I would constantly just draw things that I wanted to see, but it wasn’t about the drawing as much as it was about the idea and what was happening in the drawing. And as long as I could communicate what was happening in the drawing, whether it’s a cartoon or whatever I was doing, that was my escape hatch. And then when I went to art school, I encountered conflict. But were they asking you to copy?
No, they were not asking me to copy. See, that’s what I learned. What they were doing is they were teaching me how to think. And that’s a whole different thing, because they taught me how to study. So I studied the masters. I studied Raphael and Michelangelo and, you know, you name it, like, all the Renaissance stuff. Because in traditional animation, I went to animation school, of course. And you learned to draw dimensionally, and you learned composition, and you learned color, and you learned pretty much all of the arts. Every one of the traditional arts you could imagine is applied in the art of animation. Yeah. So once I discovered that, I got very interested in creating art, and that’s something I’ve explored over the years. Just bring something of ourselves to the table, as opposed to just imitating a technique in order to get paid. There’s a difference. For some people, that comes easily being able to find the thing within themselves that they want to put into the artwork. And for other people, it’s a bit of a struggle or it’s a bit of a search and exploration. Growing up with that disposition of not copying anything, I learned to study. So when I studied, I used tools in order to make what I expressed clearer or better understanding how to direct the eye, understanding the concepts of design. And when you draw something of nature, let’s say you’re drawing a tree or you’re painting a tree, you let the nature of it sort of come through you because you’re part of nature, too. But if you use design principles, you’re being more analytical, and you make a concept of a tree instead of kind of feeling the tree. I guess there’s different ways to approach our yeah.
So my concept in teaching design is that you learn the concepts and you don’t necessarily consciously think of them throughout the process of creating, but you have to know them in order to assimilate them to the extent that you don’t have to think about them. It’s like a tennis player goes out on the court, and, yeah, they know how to swing a tennis racket, and they know how to do a backhand, but they do it over and over and over again, so they don’t think about it while they’re playing. Right, right. It comes like muscle memory. I learned the piano, and I taught myself by muscle memory. My fingers know how to play certain things. So you learned the design tools, but you didn’t get the tools as much from education. I did a lot of reading to learn my design concepts. I did a lot of study, and so are you feeling like a lot of your design sense actually came from the doing rather than the studying of art?
Oh, interesting. It kind of did, yeah. I studied art my whole life, but when I went to specifically art school, these ideas were these concepts of design were coming at me, and I did learn them in class, in a design class from a very kind of philosophical teacher who really reached me. Like, it made sense to me, and then I embraced it. It wasn’t technical. It was more emotional and expressive, and that’s what got me. You’re a very philosophical person, so that totally makes sense. Yeah. That someone who could approach it in that direction. Yeah, there’s probably, like, so many different directions to approach. Some people could learn design just by doing and not even being told what they’re doing. I kind of think of, like, the Karate Kid movie where he’s, like, wipe on, wipe off. Oh, yeah. And he was watching, but he didn’t know he was learning. Muscle memory for karate. Right. And I think it’s the same thing some people can learn just simply by doing over and over and over again, and it becomes very intuitive. And you may not know what the terminology is for what you’re doing, but you were practicing the design concepts. And me, I come from a more logical point. When I learn something, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an artistic thing or I’m learning how to fix something or whatever. I like to study it. I like to internalize it, and then I just let it sit in the back of my mind, and I work through what I’m doing with that stuff in the back of my mind without necessarily being conscious of it. But I think everybody has a different way of approaching that. Like, some people like to work extremely intuitively, like you do. You’re very intuitive, and I’m somewhere in the middle. I feel like I’m very intuitive, but I also will sit back and actually ask myself, how is this composition being laid out? How is the form? Is there enough contrast in the values and that kind of thing. And then other people, I think, are very analytical, and they approach it from a very analytical and probably controlled aspect, but all valid ways of making art. We all land somewhere on the spectrum. That fascinates me, why we end up wherever we are. Like, whether it is it could be nature, it could be nurture, it could be, obviously a combination of both. Our experience is what we’re exposed to, which kind of gets back to the subject matter of when we’re exposed to art from outside sources. How much does that influence what we do? I was always very concerned, especially when I started with polymer because I had never worked really three dimensionally before. Everything I had done was very two dimensional and I’d made jewelry before. I’d been making jewelry for years. But it was all construction work where I was putting beads and leather and those kinds of things together, but I wasn’t sculpting. And making something in more than just a two dimensional form was kind of alien to me. So I spent a lot of time looking at other people’s work to try to get an idea of how to approach this in a three dimensional way. But it became quite a concern because I started seeing the work of others coming out in me initially and in large part that was because I didn’t know my material well enough to be able to do much of anything else but what I saw. But I did have a habit of I would start doing like a tutorial that tell you how to make a particular thing. I’d only go to about halfway through it. Once I was able to understand the material, I would then run off in a completely different direction. Which is one of the reasons I can’t do classes with a lot of teachers because I can’t actually follow the directions. After a certain point, I just want to go do my own thing and then they get very frustrated. And this happened through from high school on. The teachers would give an assignment, paint a scene, and everybody go around the campus at school and paint a scene from the campus. And I’m like, I want to paint a scene with islands and stuff out in the ocean and I’m not there and I would just do it out of my head. So I took all directions very well. I can relate to that, right? So I think in a way, stuff would start working that I was seeing was working into my work. But I have such curiosity about how things can be done or how things can be worked that I would go off in another direction. But it wasn’t was a concern initially that I was going to end up just doing stuff that looked like other people’s work. There’s a whole journey where I just kind of let myself go. Then I would do things like I would take a nap and then get up and work because I would be less analytical at that time or I would do it first thing in the morning or very late at night when I was sleepy. So anything having to do with being tired helped me a lot. I feel like equally analytical and imaginative mind working at the same time. Interesting. I do find if I’m stuck, like I’m not sure what I want to make, my stuff ends up looking like somebody else’s because I haven’t spent the time exploring my own ideas. In any area where one thing comes out, it becomes popular. Or just seeing a lot of it. And a lot of people end up doing the same thing because either they’re seeing it and that’s how they think things should look, maybe not consciously saying, oh, this is how it should look, but it’s hard for them to get past what they’ve seen. That if they’ve seen, for instance, pick an era like the Impressionists. I mean, I don’t know how they worked, I wasn’t there back then. But well, who’s a good example of that is Jackson Pollock. Right. Because everyone started doing all that drippy stuff and throwing paint at the canvas and it’s a thumbprint of them, but it actually just became a technique that they applied from someone else’s way of expressing their own unique way of letting out that energy inside. Right. But Pollock brought it out in himself with not having seen it anywhere else. And of course, we’d all like to come upon something that is completely us that no one else is doing that is going to really make us stand out. But at the same time, that is a pretty rare occurrence. So I think that’s the other thing about seeing work from other people like you and I both for different reasons, try to steer away from having our work look like other people’s work. Yeah. That becomes a weird obstacle then, to actually get in the way of you just doing your work. Because if you’re so conscious of it not looking like somebody else’s, then it becomes sort of a Catch 22 or something. Right. Because you steer your work purposely to stay away from it, to be so different, it’s not going to look like anybody and it’s like, no, that’s really actually a trap in its own way. Yeah. Because you can explore what someone else has done. And I personally think that if you’re going to explore something that looks like somebody else’s, that’s great. It’s wonderful. It is a way to build a jumping off point for your own work. But I think it’s not good when people take those what I consider practice works or explorations and actually put them out there as, look at my finished artwork. I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by having your work being put out there before. It’s a full expression of your own style and your own voice. But I mean, a lot of people do because we are in social media and you have to be out all the time and you feel like you have to be present on social media so people don’t forget about you. And so whatever you’re working on, people like to put out there. But I think if you’re exploring and looking for your own voice and your own style, you might want to keep some to yourself. That’s my personal thought. Obviously, none of us would like our work to be mistaken for somebody else. We all want a voice unique enough to be like that’s Sage Bray’s work that’s red varian’s work. Well, you see an artist you know is unmistakable. There are certain artists, you look at it, you know exactly who it is. Picasso. Well, Picasso, there was a lot of Cubists at the time, and sometimes people can mistake a Picasso for someone else only because they were looking at Cubism. But honestly, if you know Cubism well enough, you can tell if it’s Picasso or not. Yeah, that’s true. You know, and but that but then that’s the thing. Right? But when he started I don’t honestly, I’m not sure that he’s the one who started that. But no, he would seem like it I think it was Brock, right? I was going to say Brock, too, but I wasn’t sure. Yeah, but when you’re seeing that kind of work and you think, oh, I’m not going to explore that. If Picasso had said, I’m not going to look like Brock, then we never would have had some of the wonderful work that Picasso has done. And well, here’s the thing. He owned it. It was hit, it his. He took a concept related to it and interpreted it. But before I forget, I wanted to also say to counter or to add to what you were saying, not to counter it so much about sharing work and your process. He said, when people do copies of other people’s work, there’s this other ethic where they want to share their entire journey. They want to share every step in the way. Like, I started drawing a stick figure. Here’s my stick figures, everybody. And then, oh, I learned how to do this from so and so, and here’s my studies of it. Because understanding what you’re doing is different than just copying a visual. But if you put out something that’s part of your journey and you say it’s part of your journey, that would be one thing versus saying, I’m making this artwork. I think there is a mental push, and it’s probably from our society or whatnot, that you need to be accomplishing something, you need to be finishing something. So you’re doing this exploratory work, and you go out and make finished pieces and maybe even sell them. They’re on your shop or whatnot. But these pieces don’t represent your voice yet, because you haven’t gone through the full exploration to try to find the style and approach that really feeds your muse, that really expresses yourself. Are you doing yourself a disservice by putting that stuff out? Because you can’t take it down once it goes online. It’s not like you can take it down and say, oh, that’s no longer me. I’ve actually had people ask me to take down blog posts of their old work because I blogged for ten years on Polymer Clay stuff, and they’d be like, can you take that down? Because that’s not me any longer. It’s like, I can do that, but it’s not going to erase all the copies and all the sharing and all the Pinterest posts and everything that’s going to happen. So whatever you’re putting out online, once you’ve put it out there, if people start spreading it, there’s no way to take it back. Yeah. I think thinking long term, if you’re in the process of developing your voice, that you only put things out that you’re proud of, to call your own and to put your name on and to say, this is me, and we’re all going to change, we’re all going to evolve. I think about the work that I did in my first few years of doing Polymer Clay, and I’m just like, oh my God, I really wasn’t that great, but I sold it all. I won awards, but I look at it now and I’m like, oh man, I really just my values were terrible, my color combinations were terrible or whatever, but it was relatively good for that time period and for the market that I was selling. Well, there was probably something to it with your touch or the flavor you put into your sensibility that came through that really gives a push for putting your work out there when you’ve found your voice more than when you’ve gotten the skills. I think you’re right. I think that’s why I sold as much as I sold back then or why I got the awards that I got was not because my skill level was that great and some of my design sense may have been offmark, but it was very sincere. The work was like, I want to explore this. I want something that looks like this. I want to do this kind of thing that has this kind of impression that people will see. But the longer I’ve done it, especially in educating other people about what I do know. I mean, I’ve been in art school and stuff, but the more you teach people, the better you learn what you already know. Which is really cool that I can look back at some of the stuff I did, and it could have been so much better. But the fact is, once you start putting things online, you need to be proud of what you’re doing at that time if you’re going to put online. And you need to be like, I am proud of this, feel that this is really me. That even years down the road when you look at and go, god, that wasn’t very good, because you know how much better you are now or how much better you could have been that you’re still good with it. To know that at that time, you put yourself out there, you put your style, your voice, your expression, what it is that you wanted to say out into the world. I guess you could say, if it’s like, we’d go back to authenticity or true yeah. What is the value judgment we’re going to put on it? Well, authenticity, I think, gives you a tremendous boost on the value scale there. It’s like why we love children’s art. They don’t have a lot of skill, but you can look at something like, oh my God, this is amazing. Not because it is a well developed composition or whatnot, but because the expression of that child is in that piece. It’s like, okay, I’m going to reveal a little something about you, Brett. So I’m a night person and Brett’s a morning person. So he gets up in the morning, like super early and they’ll take off to work at like six in the morning or something like that. But I didn’t like him to leave without saying goodbye. But he didn’t want to wake me because I’d be up until like 02:00 in the morning working. And so I wasn’t getting up until like ten. And so he would leave me these little notes and I just love them so much. They weren’t notes. They weren’t written. Half the time there wasn’t a word on there. I think they’d be little drawings, these little sketches. A lot of times it was of our dogs or our yard or something we talked about the day before or whatnot. And they just really revealed to me his mindset and what he was thinking about and how he was seeing the world. And it was just such a wonderful thing to wake up and kind of see a little bit of Brett, the inside of Brett’s mind. Sitting on my nightstand waiting for me in the morning. Yeah, sometimes I would just sit down and just stare at a Post it and nothing would come, but I would just start to move a line around and just kind of let go. And then things that are brewing would sort of come out. Yeah. And sometimes it would just be an abstract thing. Other times I would think consciously of something that we did or something we talked about. But it gave me a peek into your brain. Yeah. And I got to say, in a way, me too, because I didn’t know what I was thinking until I put something down. And it was always pretty satisfying kind of feeling because I’m rushing out the door when I’m doing this and I think, how long is this going to so I just say, okay, it’s going to be like a minute. It’s usually like 30 seconds or a minute. And then I would oh my God. You do those in 30 seconds? Sometimes, yeah. They’re really intricate drawings. I’m going to have to post some of them on Instagram so people can see what it is that you do. If you’re okay with that. They’re very great little drawings. Well, thanks. Well, they are what they are. Yeah. But the thing is, you’re not filtering them through anything. You’re just leaving me something so that I know that you were thinking of me when you left. And it’s kind of like your good morning thing for me, which was awesome. But it was a little bit of you, and that’s the authenticity. It’s like leaving a little bit of yourself in your artwork is what you’re doing. I think that’s one of the reasons we’re attracted to handmade things, because we know somebody worked on this with their actual fingers and their little space that they lived in or whatnot. When you purchase handmade whatever, you know, you’re taking a little bit of that person home with you, and there’s just something really amazing about that. And I think for me, it’s really intriguing. Especially when I go to museums, I spend a lot of time looking at the brushstrokes and the little details and things that they’ve put in there. 500 years ago, someone took a piece of charcoal and put that across this parchment. I just love imagining that we are seeing that moment in time in front of us that was encapsulated within that work. That is a cool thing. I really like it, too. I think that’s super neat. Yeah, just the creation part. But then on top of that, if somebody is expressing something that they’re thinking that they like the aesthetics, something that they’ve experienced, the way they see the world, if they’re taking little bits of that, and that’s what their story is. I talked about story in the last yeah, the last episode. They’re taking a little bit of their own story and they’re making a little story for you to see and to build on with your own experiences. And I just think that’s such an amazing connection between the artist and the viewer or experiencer of the artwork that we are sharing ourselves with them. So the more you can do that, I think the more connection you have with the viewer, the person experiencing your work, if they can see you, if they can get a little peek into your world, into your mind, into how you see the world, it’s just an amazing connection. If they see it and then they can put themselves in there, it’s like the two of you have something you’re sharing something in a really unique way. So I, like you, have always been against copying for myself. Obviously, there is an age old tradition of artists apprentices or journeymen or whatnot copying over and over again, either the master or other people. Art schools will have you copy. I remember being in art school and being asked to copy things, and I kind of cringe, but I would do it because it was the assignment and I wanted to pass the class, but it’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to copy somebody. I had all these ideas of my own. So if it’s a hard thing for people to come up with their own stuff, I think there needs to be work done on finding what makes you curious enough to chase something other than what you’re already seeing, to have something to express, have something that you want. To get out of yourself. And sometimes it’s discovering what you want to express. Is it like therapy? I don’t know. Well, art is definitely a way of working through things, and it just doesn’t have to be like working through trauma or something. It could just be figuring out your view of the world, your thoughts, where you stand on issues of the day, or how you feel about the way you brought up your children or where you are in your particular period of life, working through those ideas. I write for that reason, and a lot of I mean, just think about when you do go to therapy. A lot of therapists will recommend you do a journal for the same reason because it’s a way of working through your thoughts in a very literal way and writing things down. You have to put it down in black and white. You have to translate it from what’s inside of you into something outside of you. And it does force you to really think through things in a way that you don’t have to when they’re just rattling around in your head. And I think artwork does the same thing, especially if you’re a very visual person. Right. There are a number of artists that I think work through their own personal stuff. Artwork, writing, music, whatever it is, is definitely a way to work through the things that you have dealt with in your life or the way you see the world. So kind of drilling back down to the subject matter they were talking about, like taking inspiration for the things we see from the outside. Another thing that we were chatting about was is there a way to know that if we are channeling other people as a way of exploring our preferences in the way we like to work and trying to find our own voice and our own style? Is there a way for us to figure out that, no, this isn’t me? I like this stuff. I find this stuff alluring. But I don’t necessarily want this to be my style. I don’t want this to represent me because it really isn’t me. That’s the snag, isn’t it? Because we’re going to all have influences in everything we do. There’s no escaping it, I think. I think the important thing is to have something to say with the tools. It liberates us. Yeah. My thought is, like, I think being able to find your own voice is a lot of times about hearing your internal dialogue. So if you’re saying to yourself, I’m going to make this thing and people are going to like it, and that’s what your focus is. And you’re probably not expressing your own thoughts at that point since your primary concern is that you want people to like this work instead of being like, for me, I know it’s my own work, when all I’m thinking about is like, I want to see how this is going to come out. I want to see if this can be this kind of texture that I love. I want to explore this. I’m so much interested in the process and what I’m seeing develop in front of me without any concern for other people, without concern for whether I’m doing a good job when I’m not worried about my technique. I’m just trying to see what I can make of it when it’s like, this pleases me. This is something I like, this is something I want to keep chasing. It’s just that simple, right? It just pleases you. Yeah. But you can be pleased for a number of reasons, right? You can be pleased that you’re doing something well, that your technique looks good, that you’re doing something that you recognize as exciting, and that it would be something that you can put on social media and that people will give you lots of hearts or a thumbs up or whatever. Too right. But you need to be pleased for yourself. My kind of test would be like, would I make this if no one else saw it ever? Would I still want to do this? And if I still want to make that, no matter what happened to it, whether anybody else is going to see it again, then I know that’s me because I don’t care. But we have to have a filter, I think, to find our voice. We have to have the kind of filter that will allow us to get past all the influences that push us to make certain things, whether it’s to sell, so we can make a buck or two or just make money back. To keep doing this thing that we do, whether it’s social media, to get those likes and to be recognized, to feel like you’re substantial as an artist, to belong, to feel like, to belong to a group, to show to other people, to justify why you buy all these art materials. Yeah, maybe there’s all these potential other influences. But when it comes down to it, if you want it to be your style and your voice, it probably really needs to come down to you making it for you and for nobody else and that you do something because you’re like, I would like to see this thing exist. And the thing is, I think a lot of people create things based on what other people see because it’s safe. It’s not very risky to make something that you’ve seen someone else make successfully and get accolades for online. Then you feel like if you make it and you do it successfully, then you’re not going to risk failure. Isn’t that the truth? I know, but I’m going to say this probably 100 times on this podcast. Failure is not just part of the experience, it’s a necessity. If you’re not failing, I feel like you’re not taking the risks. That’s going to allow you to find that voice and that’s going to allow you to find the unique approach to things that you’re not only going to have more success with that. People will recognize that uniqueness, but that you’re going to feel fulfilled, that you’re going to really enjoy that work so much. More so because you did risk. When you succeed, it’s amazing. I tell people, like, this seems totally off topic, but it’s not. People like, get excited for retirement. I’m like, I never want to retire. You know why? Because I will not have any contrast to what I’m doing every day. If you could go on vacation for the rest of your life and not have to work, that seems like a really cool thing. But the fact is, if you do that, you don’t have the downtimes, you don’t have the hard work and the effort and the bad days and all those things that make the vacation so wonderful. Contrast? Yeah, contrast. So if you’re not failing in your artwork, if you’re not trying to do things and not doing them well, when you succeed, it’s not going to be that big a deal. That’s why there’s artists who do wonderful work, and then they just completely change gears. They’re not challenged anymore. They’re not feeling like, you don’t get that high from, oh, my God, look what I just did. Look at this thing I discovered. Look at this new style or aspect or technique or just my approach changed so much so that it’s new to me and it’s exciting. You lose that excitement if you aren’t pushing yourself. And so part of pushing yourself is failing, and you fail in order to have those really wonderful, great feeling successes like working versus vacation. That’s very true. And why I don’t want to ever retire, because I don’t want to ever get to that point where I’m like, oh, I don’t have any work to do. I hear you there. Yeah, I feel the same way. And it’s also why a lot of people who go into retirement have issues with depression and finding purpose. Because having downtime and relaxing is fantastic, but it’s only really something that you can appreciate when you don’t have it all the time. It gets old. It does. And so being an artist who’s successful all the time is also not nearly as exciting as having things that don’t work out all the time. So that when you do, it’s so exciting. And then, yeah, sometimes it blows up in your face and you’re just like, oh, that didn’t work so well. And it was an expression that felt good as I did it. And then I look back on it, it’s like, well, I’m not too thrilled with what I’m seeing there, but you keep doing it to me. That’s the important part. And I hate to use the word failure when you talk about art, but it’s failing. It is what it is. But I think the only true failure in art is not to try not to do it, not to do the work or not to try something that you could fail at? Yeah, it’s like there are no stupid questions except for the ones that aren’t asked. There’s no true failure in art except for the art that’s not done. But you should at least try. And if you can’t do it, you can’t do it. You set aside, you try something else, or you keep working at it. Me, I will just keep working at it until I can do it. I’m like, oh, you think I can’t do this? I’ll show you. So you do the art, you do the work, and you are in the process, learning all the time. And honestly, over the last decade, when I was doing the magazine and stuff, I didn’t get to do a lot of my own personal work. And most of the work I did do were complete failures. It was just me messing around, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to see if I could do this texture. I wanted to see if I could make this kind of thing work. And once I figured out if I could or couldn’t, there was at least an accomplishment that I tried and I got in there and I mucked around and I was being creative, and I was just losing myself in the material and not thinking about anything else. And that, to me, was success. Kind of what you’re saying is, do you just do a lot? Just keep doing every day, as long as it’s giving you some fulfillment, some joy. If you get in there and you enjoy the time in there, even if you don’t end up with anything, you get to put on social media or you get to sell or whatnot. Unless, of course, this is how you’re making a living, then of course you want to make some stuff you can sell. But if you have that luxury of just getting in there and just messing around, then you should. So I think yeah, I think the only sad thing is if you don’t actually get in there and get creative. Any last thoughts?
Those are some good thoughts. Yeah, I don’t think so. I think we talked about a lot of good stuff. Thanks for having me. And it was a lot of fun.
Well, I’m so glad you joined us again, and I do plan on coaxing you back, so hopefully next month we will do this again. In the meantime, I have a couple of notes. I did stop in the middle of our conversation to look up the Picasso question, and as it turns out, it wasn’t Pablo Picasso or George’s Rock. It was both of them. They collaborated on cubism. Technically, Picasso did the first somewhat Cubist painting, but when Georges Brock saw it, he was just inspired, and the two of them started collaborating and working on it. And from that collaboration came what we know as cubism. So got that straightened out. We also started talking a little bit about writing things down again, which we talked about in the last episode, which was the one where I presented the challenge, which is to try to find a story every day and use that for inspiration for your work. And one of the suggestions was to write down those stories that you find every day. So I’m really curious if you’ve done that. So if you want to drop me a note, pop in on social media, send me a message there. I’m really curious if you started the challenge and what you think of it so far. At some point, I’ll probably get like a Facebook page up if people want to interact, but just trying to get a good podcast out for you for the time being. And that includes trying to do my first fully interactive episode. If you’ve read the promotional stuff or heard any of that, I talk about how interactive I want this to be.
So starting this week, I’m going to be collecting feedback from you, the listeners. The question is going to be, what do you think of artificial intelligence generated art, the AI art? That it’s all the thing now to punch a bunch of keywords in and the AI goes out on the Internet and collects images associated with those keywords and makes art from it or any of the other things that are out there right now that AI is creating art through. I think some of us may feel threatened, may not feel that it’s artwork, but some of the things look good. So the question is, is that art? And do you feel that it is valid and relevant? Does it inspire? Does it make us think? But I want to know what you think. I want to know what you’ve read and what your thoughts are on it. So jump in on any of the avenues of communication that I have available or check out the conversation that will be happening on Facebook. It may actually start on my personal Facebook page, which is Sage Braveron. Otherwise, reach out to me on my website to www the sagearts.com. Go to the contact page and send me an email through the form, or use the red button in the lower right hand corner to leave a voicemail. Can also join me on Instagram as well as Facebook, the Instagram page at instagram. Comthesageartspodcast. And the official Sageartspodcast Facebook page is Facebook.com. The Sage Arts podcast. If you’re enjoying these episodes and are finding value for yourself and your art and what I’m doing here, consider sending support and encouragement through my Buy Me a Coffee page where you can send a little one time contribution. It’s as little as $4, whatever you’d like to do that’s Buy me a Coffeey. Comthastagearts. Also, there’s an orange donation button halfway down the homepage of the Sage Arts website. If you want to do that through there. My quick shout out this week is to Barbara. You know who you are. Barbara sent me a really nice note on Facebook. It’s like the perfect quote that you would want on your website. She said. I’ve listened to a couple of them now, and I just love this podcast. It always has some little element that inspires me, and that’s so much what I want to do. I hope that does it for you. If it’s not or I’m not hitting the subjects that you’re hoping for, please write me and let me know, because what you need is what I want to talk about. So I hope you’re finding those stories, finding that inspiration, and just getting your hands in there. So remember, feed your muse, stay true to your weirdness, and we’ll see you next time on The Sage Arts Podcast.
