The last two and a half years I have been extremely disciplined in my practice.  I wake used to wake up every morning and make my collage work, then I switched, now I work when I get home from my “job” .   I stay up late in my studio sometimes till 2 am, cutting and gluing and talking with my girlfriend. We listen to music, smoke an occasional cigarette, the whole thing is really relaxing.

The other day I was not in my studio, instead I was up in the kitchen trying to make something to eat.  It was the most difficult thing, I couldn’t find the knives, couldn’t remember to chop something, I was a mess in the kitchen, I went down to my studio and everything seemed to work so much easier for me.  The knives I knew were they were, I knew how to cut with them, to work with my materials, I knew where every image in my huge stack of magazines and photo copies hide in their piles when it came time to retrieve them.   I have worked hard to become this comfortable in my practice, to tune my sight and my hand to accomplish more and more accurately the callings to create that I see and hear daily.  The more I tune into this, the more I practice, the more I am fed with ideas, and the more I expect myself to exceed my potential.

I told a friend of mine the other day, that I want to be the best. He asked me what being the best meant, because it’s entirely subjective,  but really, I am not so much interested in being better than other people, but chewing away slowly to get closer and closer to that expression of who I actually am.  If incense were music

Incenso Fosse Música : Paulo Leminski

isso de querer
ser exatamente aquilo
que a gente é
ainda vai
nos levar além

 

 

this of wanting
to be exactly that
which we are
is bound to
take us beyond

I have found the more I just put my head down and work, develop my work, and put away all the other voices and BS that comes with that WANT of wanting to be an artist, that I have a much clearer way of being me as an artist.   Put your head down and work, don’t worry about it, the work will take you places, but first have faith in it, work it nurture it, grow with it.  I used to expect my work to take me places and to give me things like money, fame, sex and power. It was like a had a beautiful person in my life that loved me more than anything in the world, and she was right in the room with me and all I could say is ‘WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR ME ?’  I now know, that it is, what am I going to do for my art.