Filling the Creative Well

January 22, 2019

Filling the Creative Well

Jean-François Millet The Sower 1850 MFA Boston

The Sower (after Millet) by Van Gogh- Etten, April 1881

Van Gogh Museum

Saint-Rémy: Late October, 1889

Sower with Setting Sun 1888

One of the things that has always bothered me is when artists say that they don't look to others for inspiration. I hear artists say it all the time. It's an absurd statement.

As humans, we're influenced by what we take in. As artists, our job is to fill our well and then do the work. Inspiration and ideas are abundant. It's our job to take what we need from the world around us, put it in our pocket and use it when the time comes.

Over the past two years, I've spent time studying the work of Van Gogh. I have shelves and piles of books. Copies of his paintings are taped to my walls. I take every opportunity that I can to stand in front of his paintings. Like most artists, Vincent also took the time to study the work of others. One of those artists was Jean-François Millet.

"If someone plays Beethoven, he adds his own personal interpretation; in the music, especially in the singing, the interpretation also counts and the composer doesn't have to be the only one to perform his compositions. Anyway, especially now I am ill, I am trying to create something to comfort me, for my own pleasure. I put the black and white by or after Delacroix or Millet in front of me to use as a motif. And then I improvise in colour [...] seeking reminiscences of their paintings; but the memory, the vague consonance of colours while are at least correct in spirit, that is my interpretation."

Above you can see the original Sower as created by Millet. Millet caused quite the commotion when the painting first debuted. It wasn't just Van Gogh who was influenced by Millet. You can see others work inspired by Millet here. Another thing worth noting is when a subject catches an artist's eye and they continue to study it over the years creating multiples based on that theme (Millet did it. Van Gogh did it. Munch did it. They're far from the only ones.)

Our job as artists is to look, digest, ponder and do the work. Did you know that in the early years of Picasso and Braque's friendship that it was hard to tell who had made what? Neither worried about copying. Their job was to expand on each other's ideas and do the work and see what happened. Wake up and do the same thing again the next day. Learn from it. Push it. Expand on it. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that.

We learn from each other. We push each other. We encourage each other (even when we're not aware of it.) It's one thing if I were to say, "I painted the sunflowers on the page below." I most certainly did not. I cut them out from a Van Gogh painting and collaged them onto the page. My next step (which I'll be sharing on my Instagram) is to learn more from Van Gogh, to expand on what I've spent more than twenty years learning by doing the work in my journal. I am excited to see what spills out from my well onto the page.