Bean Up The Nose Art's Twitter buddy @LisaKilian is a terrific writer. Her blog, "What Not To Do As A Writer," is a go-to for sure. Her posts are perceptive, spunky, hilarious, smart, irreverent -- and ALWAYS encouraging us to "Go for more!" in our art lives.
A recent post, "Fearing Unoriginality," explores originality in art. Lisa reports that she was collecting and editing posts from staff members at work for blogs. One staff member nervously told her about his piece, "I feel like I'm saying something important, but everyone has already said it before."
Ain't it the truth?
Lisa's awesome rumination (go read it! it's great!) leads to her conclusions that -- so what?!?! It's really important that you say it anyway. Because, "chances are, someone is going to like what you have to say even if they've already heard it before." Because, "(p)eople like what they like because it speaks to them in some way." And no matter what, what you have to say "still adds to the collective voice, and it still changes everything." 
Totally. Like, how many times have we seen paintings of flowers in a vase? And we still love them. Cherish them. Take photos of them and post them for others to see. Feel compelled to paint our own.
Even though this exact subject -- flowers in a vase -- has probably been painted 12,000,000 or so times. SO WHAT?!?!?!?!
And once we get over the fear and constraint and discomfort we feel in thinking we should not try because it's already been done before . . . let's also ask ourselves, "Why does that even matter?"
Because, seriously, why does it?
Where else in life do we constrain ourselves like this? Where someone's having done or seen something before means we don't cherish the opportunity to do it ourselves again? People fall in love all the time. Have children all the time. Start new jobs all the time. Travel to Paris all the time. We don't think, "I'm not going to do that, because it's been done already" about those things.
Nope.
In fact, even when WE have done those things already in life, we still -- often -- want to do them again. And again.
Because even though there really is nothing new under the sun, things FEEL new to us all the time. THANK GOODNESS.
So, we vote for taking art out of the "special" box in our heads -- where subjects have to be new, pristine, never-before-imagined. Let's get over it. We don't put that sort of limitation on ourselves in other areas in life. Why should art be any different? Let's take it out of that special, rarified, too-hard box. Let's get on with it. It does not matter that people have already painted flowers in vases. Paint your own anyway. They matter. ROCK ON!!!
3 comments:
That's a great point about still doing miraculous things that other people have done. We don't think of that as unoriginality, we think of it as "making it."
And you know, I never thought of it that way, which just gos to prove the point. In a blog about my blog I've just gotten a new perspective on my own article. It works!
So let's just make it as artists and do whatever it is we love to do. :)
Despite plenty to do, Abraham Lincoln read avidly during the Civil War. And, he wasn’t afraid to incorporate the ideas of others into his own writing. Coming from Illinois, he naturally paid attention to local papers like the Chicago Tribune. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, the Tribune editorialized (in 1862) that the war would likely destroy “the sum total of profit that has been derived from slaveholding” and that “our own sufferings” would be balanced by the “bloodshed and tears of two centuries of slavery.” Imagine if Lincoln had been afraid to revoice those same ideas-and even the same words-when he wrote in his second inaugural address, “Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.” Sometimes we need to see it again and hear it again, and again.
Lisa: thanks so much for logging in here on this great topic that you hatched, and for hatching it!
Anonymous: wow. Never imagined I'd see Abraham Lincoln worked into this segment.
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