An Artist's Work Is Never Done

One of the greatest lessons I learned about art was during my freshman year at RISD.  As a young artist, I was not confident in my abilities and had a tendency to overwork my art... I never knew when I was done.  One of my professors, Gareth Jones, pulled me aside one day and told me how to stop.  He explained that in time, I would develop enough self-knowledge to know when I was done with the art, rather than when the art was done.  In the meantime, he instructed, I should churn out as much work as I could; instead of trying to perfect the piece I'm working on now, I should move on and put that energy into starting a new project (practice makes perfect, after all).  I think his view was that unfinished art was preferable to art that was taken too far, and that interesting things were hidden in the imperfections.

It was wise advice and as 18 year-olds often do, I ignored it.  As a result, I spent many more years perfecting, and thus destroying, my own work before coming around to his point of view.

I still have not fully learned this lesson.  As some of you may have noticed, I have been messing around with the look of the website as well as revising and rewriting posts days after I've published them.  Heck, not ten minutes ago, I almost completely rewrote the last paragraph of my Aziz Ansari post!  I understand how annoying that can be, so I just wanted you all to know that I am aware of this foible and am working hard to overcome it.  Gareth was right... it's better to start something new than to revise something into oblivion.  That means you can expect a lot of new content in the coming weeks and months.  For the filmmakers, please check out my Resources For Filmmakers page: there's some really helpful stuff up there and there will be new content soon.

Please also check out the website of my good friend Adam Doyle.  He's a talented artist and illustrator and designed for me the beautiful painterly logo you now see above you.

In the meantime, keep checking back for more goodies, as well as a contest or two.

Excelsior!

- Greg