Painting = self-cutting, Y/Y?

[tooth_and_claw]

There seems to be a theme running through almost all of the recent essays I see, on or off LJ, that tackle either writing or art: that the act of growing, learning, and expanding in either is an inherently painful experience. Lots of adjectives like "shredding", "tearing", "agonizing" and "depressing" are used to describe the experience. It seems

Comments

[laurelwen]

There's a book called Art and Fear that you should read. I got my copy at Border's in Bton and it was a quick read, but worthwhile. (Quick enough that you may not even have to buy it--hooray for using bookstores as libraries.)

[ninja_turbo]

I've never been a huge 'bleed for your craft' artist, but at Clarion West, we were always being urged to push ourselves to the next level, to strive, try harder, fail bigger, because that was the point of the workshop. However, to flow into the metaphorical pattern you've identified, the phrase that most stuck in my head about that urge is in fact to "bleed all over the page

[tooth_and_claw]

But I think there's a huge difference between putting emotion into what you're doing-- which can include pain, often with powerful results-- and equating the *process itself* with being innately painful. Bleeding all over the page, as you say, can be incredibly healing and cathartic. Even making yourself feel something for the sake of your story is part and parcel of the process for some people. But the difference lies in where it becomes pathological, where every time you attend to that page or canvas, the pain comes; when it has nothing to do with what your working on, and everything with how you approach that work

[swan_tower]

Yeah . . . all these posts with their metaphors of violence just leave me cold. The things I have the most fun creating are not necessarily good, and the ones that hurt are not necessarily bad. But I just don't feel any answering resonance from the notion that I should be tearing my skin off and leaving my intestines all over the page for the reader. The closest I come is when I feel the pain I'm inflicting on my characters, when I ache in sympathy for them. Beyond that, though . . . I don't think I think that way.

[squishymeister]

and then there's those of us who have sold our souls to the system and spend all of our time jumping through hoops and writing dry medical reports only to have them too shredded apart for the hope of one day moving past the process and the rules and actually making a difference.

Seems that this sort of thing is universal...

(I have it on my to do list to call you today, if I don't then you can feel free to fire me)

[ozziel]

I'd probably say that most artists are drama queens. =P

[deadmanwade]

Kinda like how most game store employees are mid-twenties, single, never graduated from college slackers? ;)

[ozziel]

who says I'm single?