Taking Influence

8/28/13

This past weekend I took a workshop with David Bailin at the Arkansas Arts Center. David is an excellent artist who focuses on narrative drawing. I took the the workshop to get out of my normal process a little. I wanted to grow and stretch. It was a fantastic workshop!  I learned a lot more about depicting the figure. Plus, the workshop opened my thinking about creating narrative in my work. The other great thing that I took away was the importance of taking responsibility for creating something meaningful in my work. I loved learning about David’s process and his approach. So much so, that I began to wonder if I should change my process and approach to colorful painting, what I call Energetic Color. However, I came back to the one statement that David made that was my main takeaway. He told me that being an artist is about digging down into your core beliefs and communicating from that core. With that in mind, I realized that David and I are different in our core beliefs. So, I am choosing to take the important ideas from this thought provoking workshop and select the parts that will help me become better at exploring my core beliefs through my work. Perhaps you might consider doing the same with your influences.

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