I thought having two of my works on exhibit would eliminate any imposter’s syndrom I still have about calling myself an artist. No such luck!

The exhibit opening wound itself up with a lecture from an art history professor that got me thinking about novelty bias and the pressure on artists to do or say something noteworthy and new–to “contribute” to the development of art or reflect contemporary concerns and obsessions with a novel choice of medium, process, or presentation.

I haven’t really read any arts theory–excepting the tiny bit I retained from in Dr. Aquila’s Arts and Ideas course 20-plus years ago. I came to sketching and painting and all the rest with a craft and maker mindset rather than an academic arts-theory mindset. I want to reflect and add beauty to the world through the media accessible to me.

It’s not that I’m uninterested in novelty and trying new things. But there is no end of traditional media I haven’t yet tried and subjects from my life that I haven’t yet tackled!

It all recalls to me the Chesterton quote below. I am not strong enough to exult in monotony forever, but I have enough of the child left in me to spend a week or a month or however long inspiration lasts playing with variations on one idea, one challenge before my interest flags and the vision dims and curiosity drags me onward to other challenges.

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy