My creative lesson 8 — Art is a visual diary, or, an ode to Picasso
23 February, 2020
My creative lesson this week comes from the master Pablo Picasso. He has always been one of my favourite artists even though he was apparently a total chauvinist.
Not only does his prolificness impress me, he created a total of 147,800 pieces . I also like how he tried out new stuff and constantly changed his perspective of the world. Sometimes the models were blue, or wearing clown outfits, looked square-ish and sometimes they had an ear in their eye 😁.
It is as though he would get an idea in his head and then paint it in various ways to explore this new thing. Once he examined the idea or concept thoroughly, he would put it down and move on to the next thing.
This week, I came across a previously unheard of (for me) quote from my art hero. Picasso once said that: “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
Of course he is 100% percent correct, isn’t he?
The art that we create now, will one day remind us of that exact moment and place that we made it. We will remember how we felt and the process of making it.
Somewhere in the future my peach blossom photo will definitely remind me of that walk that I took on a sunny day in February in the peach orchard. This post will someday resurface on Facebook and I will remember writing these words on the train to Tel Aviv.
Now that I am not a spring chicken 😁 anymore, I am more aware of how quickly time passes and how the everyday details of a lived life blur together.
Stepping out of all that to take a photo, write a post or create something accentuates the moment. And those days that you sit quietly and think back, these are the moments that often pops up. These are the moments that everything was so beautiful that you just had to pull out your cell phone or sit down and write about what you have experienced.
We constantly have ideas floating around in our heads, so see and hear things that impress us in some way. I think that we are obligated to respond to these things. In some way we have to answer back and either write about our impressions or draw or photograph them or create a new dish or song.
Our senses are not just there to experience things and find joy in them. We are meant to take these things and create something with them to enhance the world for others.
Paying attention to beauty and making sure that we ourselves are also creative will enhance and deepen our memories.It will help us to lead a rich and fulfilled life.
The older we get and the more memories we create, the more difficult it is to remember all these tiny details that make up your life. We capture these tiny details in the things that we create and unconsciously add timestamps to them.
We love to groan at ourselves in old photos. Our hair is weird and our clothes funny. But we also marvel at our wrinkle-less faces and secretly delight in these artifacts of the past. They remind us of a different time and place and show that we have lived in these worlds.
Making art is so much more intense than old photo albums. We may also groan at our inexperience and sloppy work but they also show us how far we have travelled on our creative journeys. It shows that we saw our world at a specific time and place and not only lived in but also responded to it.
If you want to commit to doing one creative thing a week, how about joining us at 52Frames.com? You can jump in whenever you want and participation is free.
I belong to this photo group called 52Frames where we have to take a photo and upload it every week. (It is 100% free to join but take note that the deadlines are strict.) Plodding along every week getting my weekly photo has taught me a lot about creativity.
My other creative endeavors are writing words, writing code and messing around with drawings and fiber art.
Here are a few of my other lessons about creativity:
My creative lesson of week 4: Complete, don’t compete
My creative lesson 6: The importance of taking yourself on a date
My creative lesson 7: You will learn things that you didn’t know you didn’t know
