Yesterday afternoon Franca Temujin wrote and asked: "Have you
ever noticed that when you learn a new discipline--printmaking,
sculpture, painting, etc., if you're in the right frame of mind,
you bring with you such freshness??How can we maintain that?
That openness to new material--innocence--can it last forever?"

Thanks for that Franca.?Seasoned artists know this as not just
a problem--it's the main problem.?As the pessimist said,
"Everything palls, everything perishes, everything passes."
Remember well your first kiss, first sip of wine, first work in
a new medium.?

Some ideas on innocence and freshness can be found in "Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki.?He talks about Right
Practice, Right Attitude, Right Understanding, and other
Buddhist basics.?"In the beginner's mind there are many
possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few," he says.
This resonates with many artists.?And so does its opposite.
"In the beginner's mind it's all pretty simple, in the expert's
mind there are too many ways."?I've been marooned on both.?A
long time ago I set myself the task of finding a specific
mindbender to deal with the problem.

Suspecting the value of wonder, I wondered if I could put myself
fairly permanently in a state of wonder.?Can I do this??How
will it turn out??What miracle is this??This point of view, I
thought, might be insurance for ongoing creation.?With a little
twist of an already twisted mind, the daily paint became itself
a wonder--from the mystery of pigment to the wonder of
canvas-carried forms.?I realized that my daily work, even the
day itself, had to be always reinvented.?Dumb curiosity was the
key.?

Where curiosity stops, boredom begins.?For me, boredom was
deadly.?Strokes, I found, could be all the same--or they could
be all different.?It was a matter of attitude.?Mixtures could
be deadly and predictable, or they could be laden with
surprises.?All subtle differences, all subtleties, had to march
in the direction of change--often minor, seemingly
inconsequential change.?It's a bit like watching the growth and
development of a child.?In order to alert your creative soul to
wonder, you need to be simple and keep your eyes wide open.?As
in a first kiss.?It's all a first kiss.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "An artist must actively caress wonder: for fascination,
like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of
living." (Eric Maisel)

Esoterica:?"Wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance," said
Samuel Johnson.?Maintaining a sense of novelty is key to the
creative process.?Today, as you read this, I'm starting a two
day workshop with what looks like 30 terrific painters.?In my
demos and crits I must remember not to reach always for my
time-worn bag of tricks, but rather to feel in my deep soul that
the best of art is experiment and invention.?Life is experiment
and invention.?May the Goddess Muse give us all innocence.?"I
never get tired of the blue sky." (Vincent Van Gogh)