Author: James Chiang

“To know one way is to know all ways.” — Miyamoto Musashi, Samurai/Philosopher

In modern life, there isn’t much time given to proper preparation or honest reflection. In fact, most young artists, including some professionals, often skip one or both. The obsession is on doing — being productive and achieving maximum efficiency, the absolute mantra of technology and corporate business. This is all fine and dandy if it didn’t come with the price of losing our personal touch in the work, real growth in skill and understanding, as well as sacrificing what is, in my humble opinion, the greatest reason for doing art: the sense of fulfillment that comes with doing things the slow, attentive, and dutiful way.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln, US President

Preparation:

We’ve talked a lot about preparation here, how important it is, and how it can help in the process of creation. We know that it aligns us to our goals and sets out a path upon which to take. But being prepared is about more than just having a plan. It entails also a sense of readiness that incorporates both the mental and physical. In live performance arts such as acting, music and sports, artists are first practitioners — they acquire, practice and rehearse the skills and actions they need during the performance. Much can be learned from these creatives as their routines set in motion the power of muscle memory and sensory acuity needed to excel when it counts. Although the process of visual crafts such as film, animation, and painting compare more with the assembly act of designing and building architecture, visual artists would also achieve greater likelihood of success if they adopt a similar “performance” mentality because each day on the job is, in a way, a performance. We not only build our art this way, we build ourselves. There is no “undo” button in life, only do-overs.

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” ― Carl Gustav Jung, Psychologist

Decision-Action:

Ultimately, we have to do the work. But we should only act after we’ve developed some idea of what we’re doing or where we’re going. Goals matter. This is not a bad idea when it comes to creating art or living a life. Unfortunately (or fortunately) life is unpredictable, so therefore our plans and preparations are only just that — plans and preparations — they’re not predictions or assurances of a better future; results are never guaranteed. In the doing — deciding and then taking immediate physical action — comes the execution of all we know and an expression of our most inner selves. Here, instinct rules; there is no time for thinking. This is the test of all that we know up to that point. It’s also a test of our persistence and discipline. It’s the real thing. Success or failure loses its significance. Our attention is only on the doing; there’s no ego involved. Like a Zen student, we learn that only by giving in completely to the moment of action can we carry out our actions with honesty and full-focus; by being detached from desire there’s purity of attention behind the effort. It’s both an act of faith and one of liberation.

“You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!” ― Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Reflection:

Upon completion of a task, project or performance, an artist must take stock of things. This is more than just looking at the results but analyzing both the big picture and breaking down the details of what went well and what didn’t. Here’s where we let the left hemisphere — the analytical/rational side of us — respond to the outcomes as objectively and non-emotionally as possible. Of course, an allotted time must pass between a project’s completion and the post-mortem, but this step is important. Else we can’t learn from our mistakes and failures, and thus, inevitably repeat the same efforts and achieve the same disappointing results. We all know that doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. Only by taking the time to truly reflect, on both the results and the process taken, can we make a reasonable assessment on the entirety of the experience so that we can then properly make the necessary adjustments. It is wise to take this quiet time as a moment for contemplation.

“An unexamined life is not worth living” — Socrates, Philosopher

In summary, no more needs to be said other than the fact that we must go through the ENTIRE procedure of preparation, decision-action and reflection in order to progress in our craft. None of the steps can be ignored or by-passed and to be locked onto any one stage for too long can be paralyzing. So be careful of either automation or clever shortcuts; it might be tempting to skip or skimp on necessary actions to be faster, but in the long run there’s a huge price to pay — you become more ignorant (less skilled), lazier, and ironically, slower.

By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man.” — Immanuel Kant, Philosopher

Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed. — Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects

To survive (and it’s important to survive) we must be aware of our current situation and the “state of things.” In other words, we need to be able to adapt. For the artist, that has always been the challenge. Not only is it unnatural to conform to dogma and to stray from one’s instinct, to do so speaks out against everything that an artist has been brought into this world to do. Creators throughout human history have been both destined and burdened with the job of challenging the status quo and introducing new ways of conquering problems. Artists not only reflect society by being excellent seers and documenters of their environment but also affect it by being innovators. That said, new ways aren’t usually popular ways. We must fight to make it happen.

And this despite living in a modern technologically dominant world. The new may appear to be welcome, but often it’s an illusion. For art is usually only welcome under the new world’s own terms — conditions that conform with the current demands of industry and profit. Efficiency and short-term success rule the day, and thus most decision-making when it comes to projects and process. I remember my agent once told me that a successful colleague of mine would’ve never been able to sell his art now if he had not already been famously successful because he is “far too slow.” Today’s marketplace demands not only art that’s deemed desirable but that which arrives on schedule. Deadlines make or break artists and studios. Every artist working in books, illustration, animation or film understands fully this predicament. As sad as it is to say, there’s hardly an art form now NOT tainted by the demands of finance and technology.

“If man — if each one of us — abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinates will be transformed into inevitabilities.” ― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

The trend is troubling. The advance of technique has hurried the world exponentially and there seems to be no stopping it. If efficiency (quickness) is the overwhelming goal, then how can we achieve quality? And how is an artist to survive, never mind prosper, in such an environment?

What’s particularly insidious about rationalizations that resistance present to us is that a lot of them are true. They’re legitimate… What resistance leaves out, of course, is that all this means diddly.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

This, of course, cannot be answered in any sort of rational manner. And that’s exactly the point; doing art is hardly rational. If it were, it wouldn’t be any fun doing it. But it’s amazing how often the challenge presents itself. Almost at every opportunity — be it struggles with money, disapproval of others, success of others, setbacks both short-term and long-term — resistance wants to make you stop doing YOUR art, stop doing what you’ve worked so hard to be doing.

I recently had dinner with an architect friend of mine about this topic and my own personal work which I noted isn’t exactly aligned with the conceptual trends of the day and she said with a laugh: “You know what to do and how to do it! You just have to sell out.” I vehemently denied of course, but the emotions beneath my own insecurity were easily aroused. It takes courage and discipline to stay the course. It’s not easy, of course, but we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves why we’re here. To honor one’s calling is to respect ourselves and our God-given talents by accepting the challenge. And often times, a nasty challenge is exactly what’s needed to force us to be extra creative and do even better art.

“A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.” — Ranier Maria Rilke, Writer

So again it seems that creative people mustn’t forget their way forward despite their difficulties. There’s not time to whine, complain or despair about it all. Our job is to create. In fact, that’s where our salvation lives. It’s also a pretty good assignment to have once you step back and look at the alternatives.

“If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation. If it blindly rejects that society, if the artist makes up his mind to take refuge in his dream, art will express nothing but a negation. In this way we shall have the production of entertainers or of formal grammarians, and in both cases this leads to an art cut off from living reality. For about a century we have been living in a society that is not even the society of money (gold can arouse carnal passions) but that of the abstract symbols of money. The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man’s carnal truth is handled as something artificial.” — Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays