Everything you write here resonates with me. I am evolving. My first two books were gardening and horticulture guides. My third book, nonfiction, dealt with parenting children with serious illness. My fourth was a book of poetry and my fifth was to have been a herb gardening book with my own illustrations. I kept painting and never wrote that book. Now I want to combine poetry and visual art and have spent a lot of time on the concept rather than the actual work. Your newsletter is the kick in the butt I needed to JUST DO THE WORK!!! So I thank you.
I'm really glad to hear this! Shahn's essay is so rich and nuanced, and I just plucked a couple ideas from it here, but I love thinking of how we all evolve, how what is "my own art" may be different things at different times. Part of Shahn's journey was from something inauthentic to "his own," but from there it was ever-refining what "his own art" even meant. So I love that you've had all these books and explorations and are now onto a new part of your journey. And yes, Shahn would say, DO THE WORK and CONSULT THE INNER CRITIC as you go. :)
It seems like over a long creative life, that we must evolve in our work, in order to keep from repeating ourselves on an endless loop. Everything we do, every medium and creative direction informs the next. Yay for you for taking the inspiration in hand and letting it take you where it will.
@ Anne Belov ... I have “played the field” and loved every minute of it, likely because my life partner has been the same since the day I turned 17. On my August birthday, that will be 48 years a couple, 43 of those married. Happily, firmly grounded, I’ve had the freedom to explore.
This is fantastic, and I don't even know where to start. Yes, I do believe the inner critic can spur us on to better work. But the problem for many, I believe, is that the inner critic is indiscriminate and also criticizes work that won't sell, or isn't what people would expect, or isn't what your Grade 10 art teacher would have approved of. Many people can't do a damn thing without the inner critic barking at them.
For me, the silencing of the inner critic came when I started using visual storytelling/graphic memoir to tell the story of my mother's Lewy Body dementia and my troubled relationship with her. At the start of the two years I worked on the project, I was still trying to make the artwork "perfect" (whatever that is), but at a certain point I let go and allowed the artwork be whatever it wanted to be. It was incredibly liberating, and took the work to a whole new level. Now I'm the middle of revamping my newsletter, and am hoping to be able to achieve this same "letting go" with the way I approach my posts. The way you approach your posts has been an inspiration---I think I mentioned this? I very much love the way they look, and feel.
Thanks for your awesome comment! I feel like the inner critic that you describe is more of a messenger for OUTER critics: Grade 10 art teacher, the marketplace. Whereas the inner critic as Shahn imagines it is just...you/me/the artist not letting ourselves create work that isn't true to who we are. He describes an ongoing process of reflection, of figuring out what we think and believe, of what we want to say, and of making sure that's what we're doing.
I love that you were able to let go in your story about your mom and am excited about your newsletter revamp! Letting go of "perfection" is letting go of your Grade 10 teacher and the stupid marketplace. :) Thanks for the kind words about my newsletter! ❤️
I suspect we're basically talking about the same thing when it comes to the inner critic, and it's all just a matter of semantics. Because of course the outer critics *become* the inner critics, whether or not we're even aware of their original source. Inner critics, or some people like to call them "the inner asshole" (😅), come from all the messages we're given during our life that we absorb and sadly believe. Messages that our art should be this way, or that way. If we're not being true to who we are with our art, it's often because we're still listening to those voices. This is what I've observed at least, in myself and so many others.
on the subject of having found your voice (i appreciate your saying that you "mostly" agree that you have done so), it seems to me that over the course of a lifetime, over the course of a career, one's voice may be constantly shifting, so that the the idea that it can be FOUND in a permanent way is (to my mind) a misperception, that there is ALWAYS a continual process of finding. like, "there it is. ah, there it is again. where did it go? ah yes, there."
it seems to me that the process of finding one's voice is a spectrum of a kind, starting from a place where we may not have any idea what it is at all, even as we use it to speak (or "speak"), ending up (or NOT "ending") at a place where there is a smaller range of how our voice might manifest, a smaller yet ever-present pendulum swinging, if that makes sense.
like the sculptor who is asked how they sculpted an elephant and who says "i just started with a cube of marble and then chipped away everything that didn't look like an elephant," but where the elephant is our voice, initially encased in the cube, eventually making itself known to us, except unlike the sculpture (or perhaps JUST like the sculpture on a long enough timeline where entropy and erosion gets involved), the thing that is known as our elephant voice is continually evolving, a fun game of hide and seek that we get to play in order to find its newest incarnation in every moment.
“Is this my own art?” is such a great guiding question for the inner critic! I find that I veer away from the importance of this question if I’m too caught up in the marketplace and looking at other people’s work. Yet when I’m actually making my own work this is the question that matters the most.
It takes lots of time, creation, and solitude to hone in on our answer (the pilgrimage, as Ben Shahn puts it).
Yes I love the question, and I agree that we need to answer from within, not without. I think we often confuse the inner critic with the outer critic (marketplace, etc)! It does take time to hone our answers and our art, and there is never necessarily an end!
Such an interesting angle on the inner critic. I’ve recently found my get unexpectedly quiet when j tried a more comic-like illustration instead of mg usual visual art. Perhaps my critic was leading me somewhere instead of simply being mean.
Oh that's an intriguing observation (that you get quieter with a certain type of work) and conclusion (that maybe you're inner critic was guiding you). It'd be interesting to test that theory even more!
Now I really have to read Ben Shahn's book! I think we have not only overstepped in our locking up of the inner critic, but we have gone too far in our efforts to eliminate criticism as a discipline. Critics, as opposed to hecklers, can serve a wonderful function of filtering for an overwhelmed audience, giving artists something to think about and push against, and hold a mirror up to our culture.
Oh my gosh yes! So many (outer, official) critics take our work seriously and often PRAISE our work! Anyway, Shahn's book still feels remarkably relevant so many decades later.
This is so inspiring and makes me think about my own work. For me personally, also again a warning to stay away from too much social media to give my own voice a bit of room to come out more.
I think I’ve said this before, but I absolutely love these visual essays of yours! And after doing one in the autumn of last year, I know how much work they are. Respect!
Yes it was so wonderful to see you in KC!!! I am still mortified that I thought your wonderful letter was from another of my California Christine/a friends! I looked at the envelope and your last name was covered by the post office "SANTA CLARITA" so I was confused from the start. xo
Everything you write here resonates with me. I am evolving. My first two books were gardening and horticulture guides. My third book, nonfiction, dealt with parenting children with serious illness. My fourth was a book of poetry and my fifth was to have been a herb gardening book with my own illustrations. I kept painting and never wrote that book. Now I want to combine poetry and visual art and have spent a lot of time on the concept rather than the actual work. Your newsletter is the kick in the butt I needed to JUST DO THE WORK!!! So I thank you.
I'm really glad to hear this! Shahn's essay is so rich and nuanced, and I just plucked a couple ideas from it here, but I love thinking of how we all evolve, how what is "my own art" may be different things at different times. Part of Shahn's journey was from something inauthentic to "his own," but from there it was ever-refining what "his own art" even meant. So I love that you've had all these books and explorations and are now onto a new part of your journey. And yes, Shahn would say, DO THE WORK and CONSULT THE INNER CRITIC as you go. :)
It seems like over a long creative life, that we must evolve in our work, in order to keep from repeating ourselves on an endless loop. Everything we do, every medium and creative direction informs the next. Yay for you for taking the inspiration in hand and letting it take you where it will.
@ Anne Belov ... I have “played the field” and loved every minute of it, likely because my life partner has been the same since the day I turned 17. On my August birthday, that will be 48 years a couple, 43 of those married. Happily, firmly grounded, I’ve had the freedom to explore.
This is fantastic, and I don't even know where to start. Yes, I do believe the inner critic can spur us on to better work. But the problem for many, I believe, is that the inner critic is indiscriminate and also criticizes work that won't sell, or isn't what people would expect, or isn't what your Grade 10 art teacher would have approved of. Many people can't do a damn thing without the inner critic barking at them.
For me, the silencing of the inner critic came when I started using visual storytelling/graphic memoir to tell the story of my mother's Lewy Body dementia and my troubled relationship with her. At the start of the two years I worked on the project, I was still trying to make the artwork "perfect" (whatever that is), but at a certain point I let go and allowed the artwork be whatever it wanted to be. It was incredibly liberating, and took the work to a whole new level. Now I'm the middle of revamping my newsletter, and am hoping to be able to achieve this same "letting go" with the way I approach my posts. The way you approach your posts has been an inspiration---I think I mentioned this? I very much love the way they look, and feel.
Thanks for your awesome comment! I feel like the inner critic that you describe is more of a messenger for OUTER critics: Grade 10 art teacher, the marketplace. Whereas the inner critic as Shahn imagines it is just...you/me/the artist not letting ourselves create work that isn't true to who we are. He describes an ongoing process of reflection, of figuring out what we think and believe, of what we want to say, and of making sure that's what we're doing.
I love that you were able to let go in your story about your mom and am excited about your newsletter revamp! Letting go of "perfection" is letting go of your Grade 10 teacher and the stupid marketplace. :) Thanks for the kind words about my newsletter! ❤️
I suspect we're basically talking about the same thing when it comes to the inner critic, and it's all just a matter of semantics. Because of course the outer critics *become* the inner critics, whether or not we're even aware of their original source. Inner critics, or some people like to call them "the inner asshole" (😅), come from all the messages we're given during our life that we absorb and sadly believe. Messages that our art should be this way, or that way. If we're not being true to who we are with our art, it's often because we're still listening to those voices. This is what I've observed at least, in myself and so many others.
dear kelcey,
this is beautiful, as always.
on the subject of having found your voice (i appreciate your saying that you "mostly" agree that you have done so), it seems to me that over the course of a lifetime, over the course of a career, one's voice may be constantly shifting, so that the the idea that it can be FOUND in a permanent way is (to my mind) a misperception, that there is ALWAYS a continual process of finding. like, "there it is. ah, there it is again. where did it go? ah yes, there."
it seems to me that the process of finding one's voice is a spectrum of a kind, starting from a place where we may not have any idea what it is at all, even as we use it to speak (or "speak"), ending up (or NOT "ending") at a place where there is a smaller range of how our voice might manifest, a smaller yet ever-present pendulum swinging, if that makes sense.
like the sculptor who is asked how they sculpted an elephant and who says "i just started with a cube of marble and then chipped away everything that didn't look like an elephant," but where the elephant is our voice, initially encased in the cube, eventually making itself known to us, except unlike the sculpture (or perhaps JUST like the sculpture on a long enough timeline where entropy and erosion gets involved), the thing that is known as our elephant voice is continually evolving, a fun game of hide and seek that we get to play in order to find its newest incarnation in every moment.
i mean, maybe! <-- my inner critic
thanks for sharing as always!
love
myq
this this this.
thanks thanks thanks!
:-D
It's a long pilgrimage indeed, moving towards one's inner self. And it's not a destination, but a process, a journey, a pilgrimage
“Is this my own art?” is such a great guiding question for the inner critic! I find that I veer away from the importance of this question if I’m too caught up in the marketplace and looking at other people’s work. Yet when I’m actually making my own work this is the question that matters the most.
It takes lots of time, creation, and solitude to hone in on our answer (the pilgrimage, as Ben Shahn puts it).
Yes I love the question, and I agree that we need to answer from within, not without. I think we often confuse the inner critic with the outer critic (marketplace, etc)! It does take time to hone our answers and our art, and there is never necessarily an end!
Such an interesting angle on the inner critic. I’ve recently found my get unexpectedly quiet when j tried a more comic-like illustration instead of mg usual visual art. Perhaps my critic was leading me somewhere instead of simply being mean.
Oh that's an intriguing observation (that you get quieter with a certain type of work) and conclusion (that maybe you're inner critic was guiding you). It'd be interesting to test that theory even more!
Great visuals, as always. I haven’t read this book, but this series of portraits you did (and the gritty lettering), is fantastic!
Oh thank you, Amy! I love his style and had fun trying some things out.
Ahhhhh I love this Kelcey!
Thank you, Grace! Ben Shahn is so inspiring!
This is wonderful and inspiring and just what I need at the moment. Thank you ❤️
I'm so glad to hear it, thank you!
What a great discussion thread from everyone. I feel inspired!
I agree! What an amazing forum!
Now I really have to read Ben Shahn's book! I think we have not only overstepped in our locking up of the inner critic, but we have gone too far in our efforts to eliminate criticism as a discipline. Critics, as opposed to hecklers, can serve a wonderful function of filtering for an overwhelmed audience, giving artists something to think about and push against, and hold a mirror up to our culture.
Oh my gosh yes! So many (outer, official) critics take our work seriously and often PRAISE our work! Anyway, Shahn's book still feels remarkably relevant so many decades later.
This is so inspiring and makes me think about my own work. For me personally, also again a warning to stay away from too much social media to give my own voice a bit of room to come out more.
Yes! Social media can turn the inner critic into an outer critic! (or something!)
I think I’ve said this before, but I absolutely love these visual essays of yours! And after doing one in the autumn of last year, I know how much work they are. Respect!
Haha, thank you for appreciating the labor! Every time, I think I can do it faster, and every time I prove myself wrong! 😂
This is marvelous!
❤️❤️❤️
Loved this Kelcey, and so good to see you in Kansas City a week ago! That cardinal, btw ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Yes it was so wonderful to see you in KC!!! I am still mortified that I thought your wonderful letter was from another of my California Christine/a friends! I looked at the envelope and your last name was covered by the post office "SANTA CLARITA" so I was confused from the start. xo
Please! Do not be embarrassed at all - I would be just as likely as you to have matched the letter with the other Christine/a if were In your place!
That is very gracious of you to say! Lucky me for wonderful penpals! :)
It's true - I feel like I'm barely keeping the wheels from flying off much of the time!
Same, girl, same! 😂❤️
Thank you, Kelcey. Shahn's writings in The Shape of Content have been a guiding light for me in my art career.
I'm glad to hear that, Bill! It's been such a treat to reread it this week.
Thanks. I'm in between things and needed this.
I'm glad that even a seasoned pro like you might find it helpful. ❤️