Hard Work

I just began a summer of two intensive language training programs and was feeling rather sorry for myself and the amount of work that I need to produce. The thought occurred to me, however, that hard work is the hallmark of most great art. Picasso may have been able to draw remarkably well from an early age, and kudos to him for it, but he was also obsessed with his own work and production time. His work came before much else in his life and though we may decry his less than stellar relationship history, we must also recognize the quality of the work produced. And this is true for many of the artists that are generally appreciated. We all, in fact, might learn something from this degree of effort.

Ach, it's true. Selfishness is not largely appreciated in our culture and certainly never before someone's work is recognized. We may all be tempted at times to put our work aside in order to make phone calls for the alumni association, or listen to a whining friend on a problem that will never change, or make supper because a good dinner is civilized, but if you care more about your pesto than your paintbrushes don't bother calling yourself a painter. If that television show is enticing you away from the play you started eight months ago then don't call yourself a writer. A friend attended an open studio along with several others in which the "artist" proudly announced that the three drawings on the wall had been produced in fifteen minutes each. I was as appalled hearing the story as he had been insulted. I could hardly imagine how the artists who had put effort into their work and their presentation felt to be associated with such a jester.

Don't waste my time with your second rate efforts. If it was that easy to draw the picture then you owe it to yourself to try something harder. I have many verbs to memorize for a quiz on Friday and the only way to do it well is to sit and repeat the conjugations over and over and over again. Likewise, from what I can tell, the only way to excel at painting is by drawing the figure over and over and over again. We learn through repetition to recognize our flaws, errors that hide subtly under our complicated constructions. That is why artists continue to sit in front of figure models and sketch five, ten and twenty minute poses even after many years of large scale paintings, whether they be portrait or landscape or abstract artists.

Hard work means not seeing friends, missing the opening of a new play, upsetting a lover, eating yogurt because you don't have time to go to the store. Not always, of course, but sometimes. To expect an artist to be sociable is patently absurd. How on earth would they produce such work if not for the fact that their work takes precedence to something else. That is what a work of passion is!

Now I may not claim to be passionate about the first six principle parts of Ancient Greek verb forms, or the forty odd irregular verbs required for my Italian quiz, but I can at least take a deep breath and do it without complaining. This attitude may not always produce art, but it is a basic foundation to the art of living.