The other day while having a conversation with my wife, I held my hand in from of my face and exclaimed, whoa!! She asked if I had lost my wedding ring again. I said no, just an idea on a modification of a watch design, and sorry to disturb what she was saying. My mind just wandered a bit.
I felt really bad that ideas are popping in my mind in the middle of conversations but the other day I read in The New York Times an article entitled, Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind. It extolls that wandering minds and daydreaming are great for creativity. The opening line . . . At long last, the doodling daydreamer is getting some respect.
So the next time I zone out in the middle of a conversation I can just explain that I was working.
I carry this memo pad with me whenever I can to jot down fleeting ideas, inventions and designs that waft across my consciousness.
Just last week I was offered the opportunity to teach a pre-college (teen) class in Digital Animation (Adobe Flash) at Westchester Community College. I am pretty psyched about the whole deal but the big difference here from my past teaching experience as an English teacher in Japan is I won’t be an assistant. I will have the opportunity to experiment and be creative with the curriculum . . . Muuuhuuuuhahahaaaaaaaa . . . . .
I suspect I will have to be a bit less experimental than I am when I cook but I am looking forward to the experience.
As I mull over how I will approach my new role as chief experimenter, I will expect the same from my students. Meaning, I would love for them to take chances creatively.
As I look for inspiration and instruction I am drawn back to one of my favorite video lectures from TED Talks. Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”
When I cook I find it difficult to stick with a recipe. I almost always throw something in a pot that wasn’t called for in a recipe or buy something strange to cook. Yesterday my experimental nature got the better of me when I purchased a whole fish at my local Japanese food market.
Porgy marinating in soy sauce, cooking sake and sesame oil.
On a whim I decided to challenge myself to cook a whole fish (something I’d never done before). At the check-out counter I felt a bit of pride in my effort as I thought I heard the the woman bagging my groceries say in Japanese to the woman at the register that it was rare to see an American purchasing a whole fish.
But when I made it home and began preparing the fish, I just felt pity for the little guy as I held his limp body in my hands and he stared back at me. Not exactly a fish stick.
The taste was wonderful but I think I will be cooking vegetarian for the remainder of the week.
These days when I am in my studio painting my wife walks in and rarely comments on what I am working on. Earlier this week she walks in and I am startled by her emphatic statement, “Now that is nice!” in reference to a small still life of three pears.
Not having much luck selling my paintings on my own I figured I would give the Etsy community a try. With a slow start well in hand, I am wondering if the rest of the public is reacting to my work the same why my wife does. So rather that continuing to try to sell my more expressive work I began to try to think of a subject matter and style that might have a more universal appeal, which started with the pears.
So I have been borrowing from one of my favorite painters Wayne Thiebaud. I should probably feel a little guilty “borrowing” so heavily from him but, he said himself . . .
“I’m very influenced by the tradition of painting and not at all self-conscious about identifying my sources. I actually steal things from people that I can use … just blatant plagiarism.”
That being said I am “stealing” from Thiebaud’s colorful foods paintings. His food paintings tend to encapsulate much of what I like to think of as good old fashioned Americana, which conjures up images of diners and drive-ins and ice cream stands. For me, these paintings evoke a distilled Norman Rockwell-esk feeling, a pure uncluttered memory or daydream that is very personal, because they tend to spark memories rather than tell a full story.
It is natural for me to paint these subjects because I love painting and I love food. I plan on doing paintings of candies and cakes but I also will detour a bit into some of my own experience by doing paintings of sushi. More precisely kaiten sushi, which is common place in Japan and yet appearing more and more in other countries. Kaiten sushi is not just about the food but also the experience of waiting for just the right plate of food to work it’s way around the conveyor belt to your grasp. Just as much as I enjoyed the experience and taste of a corn dog at a county fair, I enjoy the almost roller coaster like journey of the kaiten sushi.
These are a part of a series of small scale paintings of food.
Recently I became a Facebook user. And through an old friend whom I haven’t seen since grammar school. I was “introduced” to his mentor, an artist through Facebook. As it turns Kevin Williams and I did cross paths at an art competition while in high school. Yesterday he made an interesting post on FaceBook that drew me into his profile. Listed as his favorite book is The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan.
As it turns out I had purchased this book years ago while browsing a book store. The pages are now slightly yellowed and the the book remains as of yet unread.
I have only read the preface and up to page three of this book and already feel inspired to write something about it. The author speaks about her own creative journey as a writer and a teacher. And how she used to use alcohol as a way to access her creative self. Cameron goes on to write about how she creates after she learned not to depend upon alcohol.
I learned to get out of the way and let that creative force work through me. I learn to just show up at the page and write down what I heard. Writing became more like eavesdropping . . . I didn’t have to be in the mood. I didn’t have to take my emotional temperature to see if inpiration was pending I simply wrote . . . By resigning as the self-conscious author, I wrote freely.
At times in my life I have experimented using alcohol to help stimulate my creativity which has an obvious price to pay. But even more destructive yet more successful was my attempt to dig into my emotional past and use sadness and despair as my vehicle for creativity. Each of the methods did garner a degree of success but at a prices I don’t often want to pay. I decided a while back not to depend upon these crutches and I use other methods to get where I want creatively. Sometimes my new methods work, sometimes they don’t but I am anxious to delve further into The Artist’s Way to see what else Cameron has to say on the subject.
Below are sketches that I did on a train New Year’s Eve. The subject of bison seems to be presenting itself to me a lot lately and I am trying to see what I can make of it. Below are a couple of sketches where I was randomly sketched hoping to stumble upon an interesting image or angle. I am still searching.
