I have about 10 million things to talk about in this new section of the all-glowed up version of TwB where I plan to delve into how to live like an artist. And why that even matters. Of course it matters to those of us squeaking through our lives as artists/writers/creators, but I think it also might be of interest for those who like the end product, enjoyers of art and literature and the arts in general. Because, in the end, the arts enrich all of us, makers and enjoyers.

I want to write in this space more about AI and its relation to art forgery. (Would you rather look at a Van Meegeren or a Vermeer?) I want to encourage real artists making real art and help my readership understand why using AI could never make you a renaissance artist. (Kidding, I know you already know that). Sure, AI will fool us all at first glance, but like an art forgery, over time, it makes you feel queasy. It really does. I wrote about this in my novel, Hive, which is about art forgery.

But today, let’s talk about process and vision.

An artist has vision. Art helps us imagine better futures. In the book Exhausted by Anna Katharina Schaffner (oft quoted from of late here), she notes that “To tackle the great challenges of our times, both at a personal and a global level, we have to avoid one pitfall above all: a focus on loss rather than on vision.” When we prioritize what we have to gain rather than what we have lost, change, positive change is more likely. What we are after is meaning, connectedness, something human, something joyful. She quotes Nick Cave on our common losses: “of dignity, losses of agency, losses of trust, losses of spirit…etc.” But that even so with all these losses, says Cave, beauty, happiness, joy, will still erupt.

Obvious to say, but these eruptions are human forged. The joy is earned, the vision is also earned and fulsome and layered and complicated, because it is brought about by a human through time, through process, through trial and error, learning and delighting and struggling. Usually through a devotion — to excellence, to the materials themselves, to the history of the form. And there is a dignity in the making, there is spirit, and soul. Well, all you artists and art lovers understand this. It’s the difference between the person running by the hits in the Louvre so they can check them off some bucket list, and the person who stands in front of a painting for an hour at a time.

In short, what the world needs is a more human vision. Pre-AI, Anne Bogart said this in her book, titled What’s the Story: “we live in a world that increasingly insulates us from powerful encounters with art.” (And this includes all the arts). If more people had those types of encounters, then I don’t think AI would be such a problem. Because when we’re in the presence of art, we are also building discernment. We are transformed by an experience that is active rather than passive.

So as we live like artists, what is our vision? What is your particular story as an artist? How do we create the conditions that allow for such expansive work? How do we keep from being depleted, and how do we remain in our zones of interest?

There is an alchemy to creating great art — Bogart reminds us that James Joyce said that there is a “secret cause” at the “heart of a great artwork” by which “the perceiver arrives in the proximity.” We are talking about Luigi Galvani’s “enchantment of the heart,” also an idea Joyce talked about.

When we are transformed by making our art, then that is when others are transformed in reading or listening or looking. They are experiencing: their hearts may become enchanted. Our vision comes out of process, a deep and abiding relationship with our materials, whether they are words or paint or song, etc.

Both Rob and I have long dipped into that quirky book on art and alchemy by James Elkins, What Painting Is. Elkins talks about how “long years spent in the studio can make a person into a treasury of nearly incommunicable knowledge.”

I really love his description of attempting to copy Monet’s paintings. How the paintings look “easy” and maybe the sort of thing about which people say nowadays, oh I could make that. But when you try, you begin to see how complex one of his paintings are.

Elkins says, “An ordinary square inch in a Monet painting is a chaos, a scruffy mess of shapeless glints and tangles. His marks are so irregular, and so varied, and there are so many of them, that it is commonly impossible to tell how the surface was laid down.”

And even though much effort is put into figuring out how Monet did it, and no matter how much his technique is dissected, still, “the entire surface begins to resonate with a bewildering complexity.” An assistant works on this with Elkins for over two months analyzing textures, techniques, gestures — the in-control ones and the out-of-control ones. In the end, the clearest way of describing what Monet does is with the language of alchemy — which is “the old science of struggling with materials, and not quite understanding what is happening.”

As I move toward a firm recommitment to living my life as an artist, I’m drawing on examples like that of Monet. And I’m remembering the deep need humans have to be transformed and enchanted by art. I’m interested in the secrets and sorcery and alchemy and deep incommunicable joy and juice that lives in art and our encounters with art. I’m interested in the play between the in-control and the out-of.

What are the conditions that we need to create these works, these moments, the understanding that goes with? What are the constraints and the obstacles? How can we be more weird and unique rather than less?

When I’m asking, what are the conditions that nurture and enable creativity to happen, I think they’re important to all of us, because, strange theory, I think these are the same things that make, for example, our workplaces better and innovative and humane, not to mention our households. Life!

To end, ponder these questions as your homework, if you will: what is your vision? what is your process? In other words, what do you have to give and how best can you give it? And, WHAT IS YOUR STORY? because our stories have changed in the last few years. Next post I’m going to talk about why your story as an artist/writer/creator is important, how to convey it, and how it helps you organize and also how it gives your work some extra zing. This question is for creators, and also humans, workers, organizations, everyone. What. Is. Your. (Art). Story. (Now)?

(Note on the photos: these are taken in the studio in my basement, aka Robert Lemay Studio :) and are of the discard pile, and the mess of the paint tubes. I think they illustrate our need to just chuck stuff out that isn’t working and to just get on with the mess of it).

June 2, 2024