What Painter Are You As A Musician?

 

Klee's Bauhaus Notebook

How do you show up for creativity, and where are you on the spectrum of serious to playful, left-brained to right-brained? When I’m in divergent mode I'm in idea-collection mode and open to happy accidents. But at some point, you have to get started on making something, which will tilt you into left-brain mode. If I'm working in a score I'm almost all left-brain. Since I'm not a skilled orchestrator I have to study more.

Per this excerpt from the book The Power of Daily Practice, I'm definitely a Paul Klee (also a musician), an Agnes Martin when I'm writing in notation, a Picasso, or a Duchamp or Jasper Johns when I experiment with conceptual ideas. Artists probably identify with various musicians in the way they work. Chuck Close was inspired by composers generally in that the work was a series of small marks on a grid that over time results in a completed work.

"Joan Miró and Paul Klee are both extremely playful. But for me, Miró isn’t also serious. His tongue is too firmly in his cheek, he’s too self-consciously clever. Paul Klee is playful but also definitely serious. There’s something about the weight of the world in his painting, even as he’s making you smile. Jackson Pollock is another sort of example, wildly playful and also wildly serious. Mark Rothko is serious but not playful. And here’s the big reveal: Pablo Picasso is playful but not serious. He could have been serious; he had that in him. But over time he became an entertainer and a decorator."