eyecatcher's blog/

The boy and the sea

When we want to learn a new creative skill like photography or oil painting, the most natural thing to is to enrol in a course, find someone to teach us or learn from books or works we admire. After learning the basics, we then apply the principles.

The trouble is, many of us lack the confidence to truly express ourselves. Instead often we tend to follow what others have done or stick to a particular style or process that is most familiar or proven. This will only lead to mediocrity and seldom produce original ideas or imaginative works.

Learning art is like a traveller in a coach. At first he can make rapid and safe headway along a stretch of paved road. However when the coach reaches the end of the road, he must alight and continue on foot to find his own independent way. Unfortuntely many choose to remain on the coach.

Dancing in the dark

So what makes a masterpiece? There are two things to look at.

1. A complete unity between style, subject and technique.

2. The belief that art should express an idea greater than art itself. Without such a belief, a commitment to communicate that idea to others, all art, however accomplished technically, is confined to decoration and illustration. Technical skill can fill and decorate spaces, but only an idea connects at a deeper level with the needs of others and can change the way we see things.

To stand out from the crowd requires courage and individuality. Only those endowed with a depth of vision beyond the ordinary, and who use art, not as an end itself or as a means of personal or commercial gratification, but as a means of trying to tell a greater human or spiritual truth, are those who will succeed in creating masterpieces that can survive the sternest crtic of all - time.

- Eyewitness Companions, Art