Working with clay lately, has me wondering where ideas really come from. Is it from the collective unconscious, or my own unconscious mind, or am I simply opening the door of my mind, & letting in entities that want to manifest in this material world, and use art as their entry point.
I wonder about the latter, because we so easily form a personal relationship with famous subjects of great art, like Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's David, who are from a different time & place, yet we can still relate to them as individuals. It is the daemon of each art work with which we connect, not just the design. By that, I mean the spirit that inhabits the work - much like the spirit of place of any particular location... we "know" it intuitively.
My own process with sculpture, is a completely intuitive affair. It seems any preconceived idea I may begin with, is quickly thwarted, as the clay morphs & changes, the end result often a complete surprise to me, the maker. Even the end of a piece can come as suddenly as the jolt that wakes a person sleeping on a bus... Without warning, a piece is complete, & the process over.
Completely unpredictable, I wonder just how much of me is actually in my work... and yet, I know that nobody else would produce anything the same as I, & that I can not produce any work the same as that of another artist...
I like to think this is a great mystery, and that it can never be explained, and wonder how many other people find this is their experience too.
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