suffering
Suffering isn’t required to make art. But it is a prerequisite for being alive. For being human.
It is an inevitable fact of our existence. There is no question that we will suffer. That we will encounter loss, trauma, heartache, failure, and defeat. The only question that matters is what you do next? What happens afterward? What do you make with them?
“It’s not that pain equals art,”
says, but that “creativity has the power to look pain in the eye” and make “something better” with it.
Creativity has the capacity to take the ache and turn into clay. To throw the clay upon a wheel. To fashion it into something different. To give it shape and structure and form. To fire it until it becomes something more beautiful and transcendent. Something with function and utility.
Pain and suffering shouldn’t be romanticized or seen as idealistic. Pain and suffering aren’t indications of artistic prowess. They aren’t signs of growth or maturity. But accepting them, using them, creating something with the fuel of their presence, is.
P.S. ICAD - Day 55-58
P.P.S. Stephen Tomasko sent me another Open Call recently. This one is put on by Berkley Commonplace in partnership with the Center for Mark Twain Studies. Trying to come up with a Mark Twain themed collage was frustrating. I couldn’t find a great deal of inspiring source material. So, I decided to go digital. This is what I came up with. The good news is that if they ever decide to release a line of signature Mark Twain inspired fragrances, I may have designed the packaging…
Turning ache into clay…i love the alchemy in this imagery, Duane! There is something both delicate and fierce about using whatever we’re given to make art that’s full of meaning and life.
"What do you make with them?"
is the question I am after - really feeling this piece!