Last weekend, the midwest, and many other parts of the United States got dumped on by the first winter storm of the season. We here in Chicago got about 5-7 inches on Friday night.
When I woke up on Saturday morning and looked out the window, I began to have a debate with myself.
“Is it still snowing?” I thought. “Or is the wind just blowing around snow that has already fallen? Is this fresh powder? Or is it just gusted leftovers?”
If you create things for long enough, it sometimes gets hard to come up with something new and challenging. It’s much easier, and much more tempting, to just rearrange something you’ve already done and make it look new. It worked before, why wouldn’t it work again? This approach is “safe” certainly, but it won’t help you grow as an artist. And eventually, the wear and tear will begin to show. What was once a pure, white, clean creation, now looks like a pile black sludge.
The artist continually challenges himself to create freshly fallen powder.
After all, cold as it may be, there is nothing like untouched, freshly fallen snow.
When I woke up on Saturday morning and looked out the window, I began to have a debate with myself.
“Is it still snowing?” I thought. “Or is the wind just blowing around snow that has already fallen? Is this fresh powder? Or is it just gusted leftovers?”
If you create things for long enough, it sometimes gets hard to come up with something new and challenging. It’s much easier, and much more tempting, to just rearrange something you’ve already done and make it look new. It worked before, why wouldn’t it work again? This approach is “safe” certainly, but it won’t help you grow as an artist. And eventually, the wear and tear will begin to show. What was once a pure, white, clean creation, now looks like a pile black sludge.
The artist continually challenges himself to create freshly fallen powder.
After all, cold as it may be, there is nothing like untouched, freshly fallen snow.
