"Rollo May, in his landmark study on creativity, The Courage To Create, gave a word to the central driving force of an artist's creativity: rage. Not inquisitiveness; not friendly upbeatness; not sociability; not cooperativeness; not outgoing personality; not charm; not professionalism. Rage. Now, he meant it not so much in a conventional sense, but as a creative fire. There is a direct connection between intense passion and creative brilliance."
from a website on video games and game design. Grassroots Gamemaster
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Showing posts with label obsessed artist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obsessed artist. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Obsession Update; Obsessive Art
The project to paint huge blue morning glories on my car has taken tiny steps forward. The custom-cut stencil has arrived from England. I borrowed an electric sander from one of my brothers. And I've acquired a thrift-shop file cabinet to practice on. (Keep in mind: I'm a writer not a visual artist.)
The idea of painting my car this way has dogged me for years. There's a very good chance that it will look awful. But I must proceed. It's in my DNA. Or my karma. It was the same way with the idea of setting a novel in the city of Varanasi, India; it was clear years before I ever visited the city that I had to write such a book. That turned out to be Sister India, which grew out of notes I took after spending a winter there.
I am possessed in the same way now, not only with the morning glories, but with research on a biography of a strange and little-known painter who died in 1947. It's a good thing it's possible to be ferociously pulled by more than one project at a time; I'd be in trouble if I devoted all my time to car painting.
The feeling I--and so many of us, at one point or another--share is that of the guy in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's obsessed with the shape of a mountain he has never seen. He even sculpts the form in mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He has to find that place.
That's one kind of obsessive art. The other is the kind that is meticulously repetitive: Campbell Soup cans, for example. No doubt, the two types of obsessiveness are related.
I do have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I don't want to romanticize that. It's no fun at all. But this passion for a project feels like an obsession of a different sort. It feels like love.
SIX LINKS, cool in extremely various ways, to more on art obsessiveness:
!Obsessive-Compulsive-Artistic Geniuses?
Why Do We Like to Watch Obsessive Art
On Being Eccentric
Inventive Art Created from the Mundane
Insect-Obsessed Artist
Obsessed with Painting vs. Finding a Balance
And A QUESTION: Do you ever get obsessed with a project, maybe one that you know is weird but MUST PURSUE anyway?
The idea of painting my car this way has dogged me for years. There's a very good chance that it will look awful. But I must proceed. It's in my DNA. Or my karma. It was the same way with the idea of setting a novel in the city of Varanasi, India; it was clear years before I ever visited the city that I had to write such a book. That turned out to be Sister India, which grew out of notes I took after spending a winter there.
I am possessed in the same way now, not only with the morning glories, but with research on a biography of a strange and little-known painter who died in 1947. It's a good thing it's possible to be ferociously pulled by more than one project at a time; I'd be in trouble if I devoted all my time to car painting.
The feeling I--and so many of us, at one point or another--share is that of the guy in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's obsessed with the shape of a mountain he has never seen. He even sculpts the form in mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He has to find that place.
That's one kind of obsessive art. The other is the kind that is meticulously repetitive: Campbell Soup cans, for example. No doubt, the two types of obsessiveness are related.
I do have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I don't want to romanticize that. It's no fun at all. But this passion for a project feels like an obsession of a different sort. It feels like love.
SIX LINKS, cool in extremely various ways, to more on art obsessiveness:
!Obsessive-Compulsive-Artistic Geniuses?
Why Do We Like to Watch Obsessive Art
On Being Eccentric
Inventive Art Created from the Mundane
Insect-Obsessed Artist
Obsessed with Painting vs. Finding a Balance
And A QUESTION: Do you ever get obsessed with a project, maybe one that you know is weird but MUST PURSUE anyway?
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