Not only are the paintings from our recent exhibit impressive, the artist’s statements are also outstanding. Reflection, articulation, restraint and even poetry in the intelligent words you wrote are thought-provoking and inspiring.

In preparing your statements you all practiced editing. With our visual language this next week we will also practice editing. Conscious editing hones your vision and helps you discover what is important to your statement. It’s also a great way to tackle the stacks of ‘underpaintings’ we all collect.

David Shenk in his recent book, The Genius In All Of Us: New insights into genetics, talent, and IQ quotes Nietzsche when he writes: “Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration…[shining] down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre, and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers [are] great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering. [ p. 48]

Definitions of editing:

1. To modify………. or adapt so as to make suitable or acceptable.
3. To assemble………. the components by cutting and splicing.
4. To eliminate……… delete:

As in history, significance in the composition may be the first tool of editing. Ponder.

Bring underpaintings, maybe more than one. We will add to them with a sensitivity to the picture plane as well as the subconscious, then edit in response to the composition.