Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Artist

  • I Don’t Know

    I Don’t Know

    How did it get to where we think we are supposed to know everything? Why is it wrong to say “I don’t know“? I think it would be horrible to believe I knew everything. Where would be the opportunity for discovery? To be able to let my curiosity run free? I am quick to tell anyone I don’t know, if I don’t.

    Fallacy of certainty

    Believing we have to know everything is a trap. It will doom us to failure and disappointment. I would say there are 3 general classes of knowledge:

    1. Our values.
    2. The things we interact with on a regular basis.
    3. Everything else “out there”.

    As a person you have to know your values. Those things you will not bend. At what point will you fight for what you believe? These are the bedrock principles we build our lives on.

    In the next circle, we all do our jobs and use a lot of technology every the day. We probably drive a car or use a computer for various tasks or bank or shop online. It is important to being able to function in society that we understand enough about these things to be able to use them. That doesn’t mean we have to have a deep understanding. I was an engineer in the technology/computer industry for a career, and I absolutely know I do not fully understand all aspects of everything I use. In most cases it is OK to just understand enough to efficiently get the task done and minimize surprises. Maybe just to know enough to know how to not be stupid.

    Then there is everything else. The world is so big and interconnected and complex that no one knows how or why most of it works. I don’t understand micro or macro economics, and I’m not sure anyone else does, either. NFTs still seems like a Ponzi scheme to me. I don’t understand why people become zombies when they enter politics. Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t know and I will never figure it all out. Nor do I have to.

    No one knows even most of everything

    We listen to the talking heads on the news spouting meaningless information with full confidence. We know they are probably wrong, but they speak with authority. Therefore, we distrust ourselves. And after a while we realize they don’t know anything, either. When neither side of the debate or the “experts” can be trusted, we tend to check out, become cynical and angry. Don’t forget, though, that they have an off button.

    There is a saying called Sturgeon’s Law that says “90% of everything is crap”. I have my own corollary to that: Sturgeon was an optimist.

    If most of the information you get is bad, what do you do? Hopefully you start to trust yourself. Learn to research things that are important to you. Research means even listening to people whose opinions you don’t like. You can’t just listen to your favorite guru who says things you like to hear. Make your own decisions. Build enough knowledge to trust your instincts and decisions. Don’t believe anything you hear until you check it out.

    Curiosity

    Too much ranting about heavy stuff. Let’s talk about art!

    After a long time of working up to being an artist, I have concluded that I have to follow my curiosity and trust my instincts. Sounds simple, but it is sometimes hard.

    I have spent time at times doing things in a way that they would be accepted by other people. It wasn’t entirely wasted, but is seemed kind of phony, and it was. I realized I was making someone else’s art. I don’t do that now.

    But do we follow the fashion of the day? Do whatever we have to do to be accepted by the ones who style themselves as the opinion leaders? Who anointed them with this divine authority? They are just people with opinions.

    I find that most of my best work happens when my inspiration is to ask “what if?” or when I say “I have never seen this like this before”. And do something with it.

    Adventure

    Do you lead a boring, monotonous life? Or is every day a new adventure? Much of the choice is ours. It depends on our attitude.

    I believe that artists have the opportunity to lead lives of adventure and excitement and personal growth all the time. Even if we never leave our town.

    Adventure is exploring and finding new things that excite us. We don’t have to go to exotic locations to find that. Our point of view determines our adventure.

    Nearly every day I go walking in the areas around my studio. I always take my camera. It is covering the same ground. Occasionally I create a new route, but there are only so many variations. Sometimes I get bored with it. But I am coming to realize that when I am bored I am not letting my curiosity roam free. If my attitude is better I am likely to discover new things or appreciate something for the first time. The same with driving through Kansas. It can be a nice adventure.

    Artists are on a journey of discovery

    As artists, we should be explorers. Not discovering unknown lands, but finding new things about ourselves and the world we live in. These discoveries could be as close as our back yard.

    To do that, we need to be always asking questions: What is this? What else is it? Can I see it different? What if this was combined with that? What if …?

    At the root, all of these questions are based on the assumption that I don’t know – but I will explore it to see where I can take it. Not knowing is fundamental to being creative. When we don’t know, it should excite and inspire us.

    Forget about the rest of the world that is pressing in and telling us what we should see and believe. We are capable of deciding for our self. Being an artist means being comfortable with high levels of ambiguity. And the accompanying joy of finding new answers or showing the world something they have never seen.

    Be yourself. Trust yourself.

  • Invest in Yourself

    Invest in Yourself

    You are your best asset. As a matter of fact, you are your only asset. Invest in yourself to develop your skills and abilities.

    Professional

    I am primarily talking about our skills as an artist. We need to invest in our self to grow and get better professionally. It is a life-long process.

    Time

    Do you invest enough time in your art? Many of us have a “real” job to pay the bills. And we have families and other obligations. It stretches us pretty thin at times.

    But we cannot grow as an artist unless we put in the time to do the work. Practice, practice, practice. Repetition. Experiment. These things make us more skilled and more mature in our craft.

    I have heard of a gallery saying they are not interested in an artist until they have painted 10,000 pictures. Of course, that is a silly metric. There is no arbitrary number to reach your peak. I do believe, though, as Linus Pauling said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones.” Same with our art. We get better with practice as we learn to recognize the bad stuff and throw it away.

    We have to put in the reps.

    Training

    I don’t know about you, but before becoming an artist, my professional life involved constant learning. I seldom did things I learned in college. One of the great benefits of my previous career was that I had to learn to learn. My life as an artist is the same.

    My friend Ramit Sethi makes a point of how much he spends on personal development, from courses to books to a personal trainer. He has a much larger budget to play with than I do. Even so, in proportion to where I’m at I may rival him. No personal trainer though. I have to be content with getting out almost every day and walking about 5 miles with my camera. His advice is good. I do like and generally follow his book buying rule: “If you see a book you like, just buy it”. As I write this I’m waiting for a new one to show up.

    It’s not the amount you spend on training that matters, it’s the results. I have occasionally spent hundreds of dollars on classes that were a marginal benefit, but gotten a lot of good from a free online class. It is a matter of what speaks to you at the time. And the fact that you’re doing it regularly. I probably watch 10-15 hours of videos a week on art, marketing, sales, general business, and selected other subjects of interest. No, no funny cat videos.

    The point, though, is that we must constantly invest in our self. When you say you already know everything you need, you start to stagnate. You can always learn something new and improve your artistic skills and yourself personally. You have to.

    Marketing

    Now it starts to hurt, at least for me. I don’t like marketing. I would rather just do art.

    But I have been told over and over and I now believe I have to invest at least 20% of my time marketing. The reality is probably more like 30-40%. I have a lot of catching up to do.

    Unless we are doing our art as a hobby, and are content to just show our work to friends, we have to market ourselves. “Build it and they will come” is a great line for a movie, but is not true in real life.

    Art is a very competitive world. Galleries don’t want to hear from you. They have too many artists already. Selling online? So is everyone else. So what can we do? We build a distinct brand and be very persistent and professional in our outreach.

    Several marketing gurus have made a point that we will never get anywhere if we do something a couple of times then get discouraged and move on to something else. Persistent, repetitive, sustained marketing is required to “break in” to the world we want. I don’t like it, but that is life.

    Personal

    As important as it is to grow and take care of our self professionally, I believe it is equally important to take care of our personal life. I hope your vision for your life is about more than just professional achievement. Do not neglect your health and fitness and your mental and spiritual development.

    The training I advocated above also helps you mentally. Keeping your brain active and learning new things has a lot of long term benefits. A substantial part of the training should be targeted at things that do not seem directly related to your art. Read biographies, history, science, psychology, and even fiction. It is amazing what seemingly unrelated things can spark a creative idea.

    A key word there is “read”. You are a professional. You cannot just watch videos. Reading has a greater benefit than watching a screen. Try it. It is good for your mind.

    Mindful

    A common thread to all of this is mindfulness. This is just a fancy psychological term for being deliberate and conscious in what we do and very aware of what is going on around us. I am studying this now and I am sure I will be writing more on it later. But for now, pay attention to what you do and be very aware of your choices.

    The picture

    I love this picture with the article. It is one of the greatest train tracks I have ever seen. Look closer if nothing jumped out at you when you first saw it.

    I can take it as metaphors for a lot of things. For this article, I will use it to make the point that there are many paths we can chose. But they do not all lead to the outcome we want. Choose wisely and deliberately. The path you want is usually not the easy one. You are your best asset. Take care of yourself. Work at it.

  • That’s Not What I Was Taught

    That’s Not What I Was Taught

    We all learned our craft somehow. And if we develop as artists there comes a point where we have to stop relying on what we were taught and make our own way, maybe in a different direction. At that point we are going beyond what we were taught.

    Instruction

    Unless you were raised by wolves and picked up the concept of making art through a mystical infusion, you were taught somehow. For many that means formal art school or classes and workshops with leading artists.

    Even though I consider myself self-taught, I had thousands of hours of instruction in the form of books, videos, self-evaluation, looking at art, visiting museums, etc.

    Somehow, we got trained. The “muscle memory” was built. We learned the basic techniques and technology. The history and design and composition and color theory and the dozens of other layers of information we need to create art are introduced to us. We build on what has come before.

    It’s like shooting thousands of baskets until you are completely comfortable with the feel and weight of the ball, until you start the have the “touch” to put it where you want from all different angles and distances. This isn’t playing basketball, it’s just getting prepared to play basketball.

    Apprentice

    When the basics are laid down, most of us go through a long “apprenticeship”. It may not be formal and we may not call it that, but that is what it is.

    By apprenticeship I mean we are practicing the basics until they are smooth and natural. At this point we are probably listening to or watching a mentor and trying to create work like theirs. Nothing wrong with this. It is part of the learning process. But we are still creating someone else’s art. This is practice, training.

    To continue the basketball analogy, now we start to practice with the team. We become comfortable passing and catching and playing positions and working smoothly with the others. The coach is yelling at us and making us do drills and repetitive work that seems boring and useless. Maybe we mostly sit on the bench in games and only rotate in occasionally. The reality is that we are probably not as good yet as we think. The coach knows that. That is why we aren’t playing much right now.

    As artists, maybe we go out shooting or painting a lot with our mentor. They direct us to locations and talk through how they see the image. It is helping us learn to create a decent image. It may not be how we see it, but at this point we are trying to produce results that match theirs.

    Independence

    Ah… someday. The longer we go through our training and apprenticeship, the more we begin to chafe under the restrictions. As we develop our own style and vision some of us yearn to break away and do what we think we need to do.

    One of the things Jesus said to his disciples was interesting (well, a lot were): “Students are not greater than their teacher.” That’s true, as long as there is a teacher/student relationship. As long as the teacher has something to teach you. But he goes on to say “But the student who is fully trained will become like the teacher.”

    There comes a point where there are diminishing returns from studying from a teacher. If the student comes to a parity level with the teacher, they become the teacher.

    That is the thing. At some point, we become our own teachers. Not that we know everything, but that no one else does either, so we have to guide our self.

    Where do you go then?

    What I observe, unscientifically, is 3 paths at this point:

    • Continue doing what you were taught
    • Enhance it a little and go slightly beyond
    • Figure out that there is something different

    It seems to me that most artists proudly continue doing work like they were taught. They go on to get better and better at the same things. I’m not criticizing them. This seems to be the best path for many people. I can’t understand it myself, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

    Another group pushes a little beyond what they were taught. They enhance the techniques, maybe modernize them with new materials or processes. Maybe introduce a little fusion from another school. The result is a natural evolution of what they learned. Again, no criticism. But again, I can’t understand staying so close to home.

    It would seem obvious that I must be in the last group, since I don’t fit anywhere else. 🙂 We sincerely thank our instructors for the training they gave us. But we realize we have a different vision and will be creating a completely different form of art. This is not a rejection of our instructors, just a growth stage.

    Our own body of work

    My view is that at some point, we have to let our own vision and style emerge and take the lead in our work. This is not something that happens automatically as soon as we leave the umbrella of our instructor. It happens over some period of time. The time is completely personal and dependent only on ourselves.

    Hopefully at this point we can trust our judgment to recognize and follow the path we are being drawn to. We are creating our own body of work, in our own style, following our own vision. Now we are really an independent artist. We have no more need for a teacher. Confidants, advisors, mentors, critics even, but not teachers.

    What we are doing is not what we were taught. It is what we have transformed that teaching to that works for us.

  • It’s Messy

    It’s Messy

    Despite the image some artists try to present, the artistic process is messy. At least, for me. It is not a clear, linear path from inspiration to end result. Sometimes things don’t work. We hit dead ends. We change our minds. Even after arriving at what I thought was the end product, I may decide I don’t like it. When people look at the result, they cannot see the messy way we got there.

    Vague goals

    I can’t speak for other artists, only myself. Most of the time I only have a vague notion of what I intend to achieve when I start an image. Sure, I may have a general idea, or a theme, or I may be thinking of a project I am working on. But that is a kind of an idea, not a plan. It is definitely not precise.

    I hear artists describe having a definite plan from the beginning, with everything sketched out in detail. I sometimes envy them. But most of the time I think that sounds like a boring process. There is no room for inspiration on the spot. When I start pulling a final image together I often let what I see on the screen guide and inspire me to the end. I am glad I work in a medium that is very malleable.

    So I guess I’m a bad artist because I don’t know for sure where I am going when I start a work. Or maybe this is the process that works for me. I like to be flexible and adaptive.

    Evolving ideas

    Another side of my adaptive process is that I am open to exploring new ideas as I go. Ideas tend to build on each other, spawning new ones or modifying what I was thinking. I often end up seeing an image in a completely different way from where I started.

    For this to happen, I have to be open and receptive. Being locked into a rigid plan blocks this exploration and learning. I seldom hesitate to change my vision part way through the process. Even to discard an image because it no longer is shaping up the way I now see it.

    You could argue that I would be more efficient to do my experimenting and work out my vision before starting to refine an image. Perhaps you are right, but that is what I had to do when I was designing major software projects as an Engineer. The reality is that I am too visual to do that now as an artist. I have to see it, then make modifications.

    Mistakes

    I freely admit I make mistakes. I don’t plan them, but I don’t necessarily see them as failures.

    An “oops” is often followed by a “huh, that’s interesting; I wonder if I could use that?” Sometimes a mistake will open up a new view or thought process. It can make me see new possibilities.

    These are often happy accidents. They can lead to a creative new end and maybe even a modification of my “style”. The result of a mistake is often a realization of something I could do but I’ve never thought of it before. It is unlikely the mistake creates a finished work that I love, but it informs a new direction I could explore. It is a growth opportunity.

    Seeing new opportunities

    Opportunity is a key word in this process. My background is a long history of realism. So it can be hard for me to “loosen up” and take an image in an unexpected direction.

    To counter that, I often force myself to spend some time considering unusual processing or unlikely seeming combinations of images. Most of these experiments are failures, in the sense that they seldom make it to the final image. However, they can inform my vision. There may be some aspect of the processing that I like and work in to future images. Or it may encourage me to try something else along the same line that I do end up liking.

    We live in great times for exploration. Our image processing tools are the best anyone has ever had. Our high quality digital images have the most detail and potential for post processing that has ever existed. The barriers to our vision are mostly internal. We just can’t see it or give our self permission to go there.

    Failure to recognize

    Have you ever viewed an image in your editing software and been really undecided about it? It is not what you wanted. Your instinct is to delete it. But something way in the back of your mind says to keep it for a while.

    That happens to me. I have said before there is something cathartic about deleting images I don’t want to have around. But sometimes I need to keep them. To let them age a while. Or maybe to let my subconscious work on them a while.

    Now realistically, most of the time, when I look at them later, I know there wasn’t really anything of interest there. But sometimes… That is the joy of this. Sometimes there is an undiscovered gem. Very rarely I look at one of these saved images and realize my subconscious was trying to show me something I did not perceive at the time. This particular image may not be great, but there is a realization there that can inform my work going forward.

    That is an a-ha moment. A growth opportunity. After I get over beating myself up for not realizing the potential at the time I can add it to my repertoire of situations and patterns to look for. I have grown as an artist. Maybe it can even help me be more receptive while I am shooting.

    The image with this article is one of those slow to recognize ones. Look it over and see how many pairs of things you can find. It amazes me. I did not consciously recognize that when I shot it, but I think that is what was drawing me to it.

  • Self-centered

    Self-centered

    If you describe someone as self-centered, that is probably taken as a negative. It often is, but there is another way to see it. If you are a “fine art” artist, I believe you have to be self-centered to really be true to yourself.

    Who do you listen to?

    It’s a problem these days that people are so “connected” to social media that it can be hard to maintain our identity. Is all your work instantly posted, tweeted, shared to “the world”? Do you measure your success by the “likes” or lifts or re-tweets you get?

    This echo chamber of voices can make it hard to listen to your own. If a significant number of your followers don’t like something you post, is it bad? As with any criticism, you have to try to be objective.

    These people giving you feedback – what do they know of your intent, your feelings, the direction you feel your art should go? What do they know about the process you followed to get there?

    Most pictures on the internet don’t get more than 1-2 seconds of attention. When someone hits the “thumbs down”, what does that mean? Is that a well reasoned, critical evaluation based on objective knowledge?

    Likewise, when most people gush over your post and give you glowing praise, what does that mean? Unless they are an artist who takes the time to look more deeply, probably very little. If they follow the praise with “and I will contact you to buy it,” that carries weight.

    Who should you listen to?

    The feedback of random people on the internet probably will not take you to where you need to go as an artist.

    Do you have a small set of trusted friends who will give you reasoned and honest feedback? If so, you are lucky. I desperately wish I did. Try to build such a group. If they really are good friends their honesty will be valuable for you, even when it hurts. If they really are good friends, they will hurt you occasionally.

    Do you work with one or more galleries? Ask them for evaluations, especially of your new work. I haven’t tried it, but I understand portfolio reviews can be good. Your mileage may vary, depending on which ones you choose. I know of successful artists who still go to them for the feedback. Read Cole Thompson’s portfolio review by Mr. X that changed his art.

    Are there artists in your area who you trust? Your style may be totally different and you may not even like what they do, but that is not the point. Can they give you objective and well reasoned feedback? Try to put a group together. I am looking to collect such a group in my area.

    Ultimately, though, it comes down to having to trust your own instinct. You are you. You are the artist. No one else can answer for you or decide what your style or theme or subject is.

    Can you be objective about your own work? Some people can, some can’t. Learn to. Since you are the only one responsible for your work, you have to be able to make your own decisions.

    Unashamed

    Sean Tucker used the term unashamed in a discussion of this problem in his book The Meaning in the Making. I think it is a good word choice. This is where the self-centered aspect comes in. It is understanding who we are and what we are trying to do, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Not arrogance but confidence. We have to realize that only we own our results and are responsible for our decisions.

    Anyone who does anything publicly will be criticized for it. That is true for us when we present our art to the world. A lot of people will hate it. Some will love it. The ones who don’t like it will be quick to tell us what is wrong and how to fix it or why we should quit. As an artist, we must be able to say “thank you for the feedback, but I am going in this other direction.” We have to believe it and in our self.

    Do you believe in you? Are you confident to the point of seeming self-centered? Good. Your opinion of your art is ultimately what matters. That doesn’t mean you will get rich or famous. But you will be at peace with yourself.