Field Notes on Play

So often Robert Genn says just what one needs to hear ;)

There was no use in arguing with the woman. She had asked me
what I thought she should do next and now she was against my
suggestion. It was she who had complained her work was dull.

"Your work will continue to be dull," I said, "until you learn
to play." This was no ordinary girl--well read, smart in every
way, and very, very neat. She had read all the books. "Work is
play," she said. "Play frees up the inner child, empowers
confidence and invites creative elan. Play is a creative need."
She knew her Carl Jung.

I told her that my dad used to say, "If you can dream it, you
can do it." This advice was given in my early teens, and it
sent me off into some extreme fantasies. Like painting a mural
on the Grand Canyon. I recruited helpers, but it was the park
rangers who were unable to see my vision. "But you at least had
the dream," she said. "Some people never have them."

Talking some more about play, I suggested there were two more
things she needed besides a dream--a new way, and a new toy. I
demonstrated by laying in a painting with one of those small
rollers that house painters use for going around the edge of
door frames. The pay-load lasts forever. Colours dabbed and
mixed around the roller provide never ending blends. She gave
it a try.

After a while I pointed to a virgin tube in her paintbox. "It's
Aureolin hue--yellowish, I never use it," she said. I showed
her mine. "For the last week I've been mixing it with
everything except Mai Tais," I said. "Here in Hawaii it's
useful. Makes things glow. You can substitute it for white.
It's great for glazing too. New tones with every mix. Ya gotta
love it." She squeezed some out.

Artists are not always prepared to take advice from other
artists, but this one was beginning to see the light. "So, in
order to play properly you need three main things--a new dream,
a new way, and a new toy," she said. "I think so," I said.
"Maybe you just need a new toy, because then you might just
pick up the new way and the new dream." A peculiar creative
silence overtook us. A big wave could have taken us out. Later,
I noticed her wading into the surf. She was glowing. I squeezed
out more Aureolin hue.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the
intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.
The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." (Carl Jung)

Esoterica: Aureolin hue gets its name from aureole, the glow
that emanates from the figures and particularly the heads of
holy personages in medieval and Renaissance art. The head-glow
is also called a nimbus or a halo. If someone is miraculously
rising, the aureole is called a "glory," and if it's in the
shape of an almond it's called a "mandorla,"--the Italian word
for almond. The early Roman church referred to the effect as
"vesica piscis"--Latin for fish's bladder. The middle ages were
big on holy glows, their painters worked hard to make them from
fugitive, now discontinued colours. The modern pigment was
developed in Breslau, Germany, by N.W. Fischer, in 1848, was in
wide use by 1860, and is currently engaged on the Kona coast.

On Big and Small

From the lovely Robert Genn~

When we first arrived on the Big Island we were greeted by some
of the highest winds and roughest seas in several seasons.
Veteran surfers were turned away by the lifeguards. Saffron
finches huddled in low hedges behind lava walls. Standing on
our own seawall, I easily named a future big one "Storm on the
Kona Coast."

Pressing against the wind under the roar of the breakers, the
following days provided time for notes. Foam that whitened the
ocean for half a mile out. Great curlers where no
boogie-boarder dared. A black line that straddled the horizon.
Loaded with cliches (the translucent, green-lit wave, smoking
tops, Neptune's grasping claws) the scene would bring a sense
of awe to the most jaded. But here in this cinemascope diorama
of power, the love of small stuff is confirmed.

Make your mistakes with less on the table.
Have low commitment for courage and creativity.
Catch the wisdom of series and set.
Make variations on themes and motifs.
Build proficiency on the personal game-board.
Overcome the natural tendency of preciousness.
Feel the energy of the portable smug.
Use natural selection to drive potential larger work.

Just as the digital revolution has sped the learning of
photography, painting "smalls" in series speeds creative
progress. Because digital imagery need not be sent out for
developing, the travelling photographer can test settings and
see results on the spot. In the same way, learning on the go,
the series painter sees each variation develop. In either a
linear or in simultaneous (multi-tasking) process, a better way
is often found. Like the digital photographer, she crops,
tints, fills, glazes, sharpens, softens, revisits--and makes
the ultimate decision to keep or delete. It's the time-honoured
wisdom of the sketch.

It's good to be small and portable in the midst of greatness.
The act of remaining on location (unlike taking the tourist
snapshot--then back on the bus) has the effect of "burning in"
the experience and making it your own. It may be small stuff
you're doing, and your inadequacies may revisit and haunt you,
but the artist's life is big stuff indeed.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is."
(Robinson Jeffers)

Esoterica: Small work fits in with the pace of modern life. In
the time where the one liner, the quick fix, instant
gratification and short concentration-spans rule, small stuff
works. Life burgeons--family, friendship, fellowship, dining
and watching long-neglected DVD's like Al Gore's witness to
global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." All becomes part of
the matrix. Like an impossible jigsaw on the coffee table, the
paintbox is always there with its permanent invitation to
frustration, understanding and joy.