creativity

Freedom of Speech By Norman Rockwell

Creativity is a cousin of expression and a sibling to imagination. You see what a lot of people get wrong is you don’t need creativity to express yourself but you do need imagination to have creativity. What’s even more important for creativity is freedom. People often don’t allow themselves enough freedom to be very creative and that ends up strangling their imagination and crippling any true expression.

So how do you know if you are in a creative prison? The most obvious hint that you’ve landed in Art Hell is are you making it to please yourself or to please others. If you’re trying to please others you’re trapped in a pit. A never ending grave of empty compliments and sycophantic agendas. No one truly cares about your art but you and if you seek validation from others you’re either gathering parasites or gathering maggots. Your creativity is either being exploited or is all together dead. You’ve got to stop immediately worrying about making others happy. Happiness is one of the most bullshit states of being one can seek to attain because no one, not even the most enlightened people, know how to make themselves happy let alone others. True artists are in a never ending journey to express themselves, but money, fame, and popularity can corrupt it quickly. You can’t use any of those things as an excuse to give up your own well being, true or not, no one will forgive that once you head down that path.

So then what is the point and the solution to all this? Too never sell art? or never take commissions? No, that conclusion lacks imagination. See what I did there? A true artist knows how to express themselves and how to sell that to an audience. You see as an artist you express yourself…PUBLICLY. You have to share your creativity. You have to mine your own imagination. Want to know if you’re doing it right? Its easy, are you starting a trend or following a trend? Are you copying a master or mastering yourself? You see you can never be better at being someone else then that person already is. Bruce Lee didn’t invent Kung Fu. He didn’t adopt a style. He practiced it and mined it for creativity and made it his own. That is how you become a master. By solving yourself and only yourself. It’s like Neo in The Matrix, you can’t be “The One”…you can only be your own one. Be champion and master of you because that title will remain empty until you decide to take it, otherwise you’ll never be anything. One of the best movies about becoming an artist master is an old 1978 movie called The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. It illustrates perfectly about growth and self awareness. Healthy study and practice with other artists. Its a perfect illustration of what it takes. I’ll do a post going into detail about it soon.

Some advice, if I may, free your mind and your ass will follow. Stop begging for pets on the head like a dog that misses its owner and start looking inward. Ask yourself what do I want to do, what do I love doing, and why. Stop comparing your art to others and start mining your imagination. Like I said in a previous post, technique and craftsmanship, are secondary to honest self expression. You see no one wants a sushi master to cook smoked brisket and no one wants a pit master to make sushi. So being the best cook in the world doesn’t mean having the most skill or technique, it means being able to be yourself. It means making what you honestly want to make, because it’s the only thing that can come out of you without feeling like a sin. Specifically, as tattoo artists, we are encouraged to bend and break our wills to satisfy the whims of an obtusely minded audience often. Don’t let the mob scare you into submission. They are a paper tiger…they’re strength is not grounded in reality because they forget that the artist is a wizard and an artist will make magic whether the mob loves them or not. That’s the artist’s power to wield as they see fit and if you don’t like it…start drawing your own ideas and stop bothering the artists, they’re busy…