The Artist’s Life: Burn and Reconstruct

Why create? To discover oneself. It is more than painting a pretty picture or putting color and texture together. It is more than invoking feelings, struggling for status, proving once talent, or uniqueness, or worthiness... of something or the other. It is an urge to figure out who one is and sometimes it may be a need to create a better self. A perfect self that has structure, balance, form, and proper function.

As I prepare my canvas and start with an underpainting I sculpture with brushes and spatulas the perfect portrait of me. Again. Not happy with the original, I journey to remake it. Creating is looking for divine perfection which is impossible to reach but it is an honorable venture, legal in the state of IL, and enormously therapeutic.

Prof. Jordan B. Peterson in one of his online lectures advised to allow oneself to burn once in a while. Burn and reconstruct in a more or less controlled fashion. Don’t bottle up and explode but evaluate and restructure. All this effort to allow growth.

Hopefully, as the artist has his “aha” moments, it will pertain not only to physical technique but will also reach the unconscious that she unlocks. Enormous concentration will provide relief and for a brief moment the anxiety of being will substituted by a glimpse of understanding.

Some of the well-known artists are tremendously visionary, outside of the box, and unequally creative. However, don’t underestimate your talent. You have your own world to create, so struggle to do it and don’t mind the world around you too much. Our world is full and we never enough time to live.

Daybreak Baraga, MI 2017