Twenty years ago, my square abstract painting entitled “Desert ice cream” was a sweet favourite of a couple who walked past my little market stall on a Saturday morning. However, they did not like squares; they preferred rectangles. I do not know how it happened that I allowed myself the undesirable privilege of agreeing to reproduce my own painting. You get the drift of the story: I was going to try and figure out how to unravel the succession of seemingly haphazard marks, dots, lines and random paraphernalia I employed to construct the painting a few months earlier.
Let me tell you a little bit more about how I went about doing this kind of abstract work you see here: I simply followed the muse and I went with the flow (like many other creatives do), but I did have a few techniques I employed to rescue the situation if the painting did not settle (and I am now referring to stylistic features which all artists or creatives use). I am spontaneously unstructured with this kind of work. However, if you have fallen into the trap of agreeing to duplicate your own work by hand, in oil colour, in another format, for another’s ultimate pleasure, you have the unfortunate task of turning the unstructured into structured. The ice cream started to melt, because now the process was taking much longer, the muse was not “amused”.
I could not remember what came first; I had to use the original as a prescriptive chart; they expect to see exactly what they saw in the square, pulled slightly out of shape on a rectangular format; shapes and dimensions would differ and the illusion would be affected. I did my best and once the second version of “Desert ice cream” was delivered and I had sighed my eruptive sigh of relief, I received an “emergency art” call. They were happy, but there was a little problem, they wanted me to add more ice cream; they wanted the pink areas to be richer. So, there I was, duplicating my own work and taking instructions for the second time from people who were not involved when I whipped up the ice cream for the first time. The original moment with its pleasure and treasure, which provided the cool original “Desert ice cream”, became a little whip for me when I agreed to copying my own work. Do not do that, if you can avoid it, it is not worth the effort.
This was a little lesson for me, because when I create (as others may experience too) I am in a particular spontaneous and innovative frame of mind, but reproduction forces us into a “mindless process” that relies on repetition and perfection (that is truly not original, even if you get some financial reward for it). Rather be on the creative side, I think, it is a much safer place that affords you freedom. May you have a productive and spontaneous day and please try to whip up fresh ice cream today.
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