Routines

Chris Ofili, Watercolor on paper

I'm pushing back writing about the Basquiat show we saw last week at the Brooklyn Museum, and the really good Bogdan Achimescu show that opened last Friday here in C'ville. Via Artblog (muchas gracias Franklin), Michael Kimmelman writes in the NY Times a great article about artists and studio routines.

Mr. Ofili, it turns out, has been painting his watercolor heads nearly every day for 10 years - for himself, mostly, although some of them have made their way into the world. Watercoloring is his daily ritual. A few years ago he added the occasional bird or flower, to stop the routine from becoming a rut.

Everyone has routines. What works for one person may not for someone else. Routines can be comforting. They may be our jobs. They define our limits and we try to make something constructive out of them.

The myth is that artists are somehow different. That they leap from one peak of inspiration to another. That they reject limits - that this is precisely what makes them artists. But of course that's not true. Most artists work as the rest of us do, incrementally, day by day, according to their own habits. That most art does not rise above the level of routine has nothing necessarily to do with the value of having a ritual.

Kimmelman goes on to talk about different artist's routines and adds:

Out of routine comes inspiration. That's the idea, anyway. To grasp what's exceptional, you first have to know what's routine. I once spent several months watching the American realist painter Philip Pearlstein paint a picture of two nudes. He has followed the same routine for years. One of the models, Desirée Alvarez, who is also an artist, said that the value of watching someone else's studio routine was "in terms of discipline and day-to-dayness and commitment to work even when it isn't going well."

I've been having a hard time figuring out a balance between all my responsibilities - work, family, getting ready for our arrives-in-a-month baby and, of course, working in the studio. Kimmelman's line about most art not being a leap from peaks of inspiration really hits home - art is made in the step by step slog of the day by day. There's some quote from an artist I can't remember about being prepared for when inspiration does strike. A spanish-speaker I know who I try to practice my bad español with always says to me - little by little, day by day (though she says it in spanish and it sounds really nice).


Sketchbook diary entry for 03.15.05

Routines can be a way to help with all this - a way of clearing the mind and changing gears. I already do a few things everyday, obsessively. I keep a visual diary of my life in my sketchbook that I draw most nights before bed. I've also been doing an ink-wash drawing everyday for a few weeks, some of which I've had up here on the blog. I draw on postcards that I send out to anyone who asks. I also do a secret drawing/photo project every day that I don't want to mention.

Routines of art-making can also be a way to more fully integrate one's life with one's art. That sounds a little cheesy to me, but by doing the little things I do every day, the seemingly random events of my life start to inform my drawing and vice versa. They also help me to feel like I'm still making work even when my other life starts to crowd out any serious studio time.

I was kind of losing my mind this weekend before reading the article, thinking that I was lost and would never get back to serious work. This reminds me that it's all serious work and to keep drawing and stop whining.