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Marrying your craft

Marrying your craft


"Where there is love, there is life." Mahatma Gandhi

Often I think of the commitment to one's art, the passion that is involved and the headiness associated with creation that it always brings me to the one conclusion that it really is a marriage of sorts.  I cannot anthropomorphise art, but I can attest that to delve into creation one's complete being has to be given over in all capacity of mind and body.  It becomes a union, there is no doubt about it, all consuming, like a lover's glance at the very beginning of a relationship when euphoria takes over, only with art, this euphoric state lasts for a life time.

I pretend that art or creation does not infiltrate my entire life, that I have normality around me, but here is where I lie.  I must accept that when I am creating I am all consumed, and when I am not, I am still all consumed.  To others, it looks like a vagueness, a far away state, my head elsewhere, my head in the clouds, and I am constantly reminded to get back on track, but my track has already transported me elsewhere, and for this I am always apologetic.

I do not romanticise the state of creation, far from it, it is a most frustrating state to be embroiled in, because in essence, nothing else matters, and when I mean nothing else, I mean nothing else. I am not alone in this. I see it around me in the obsessiveness that infiltrates artists, creators, filmmakers, and writers to their craft; the marriage to their craft.  This of course, is where life is, because this of course, is where love is.









I think about Stanley Kubrick and his obsessiveness to his creations. The detail in his films and the need to be a perfectionist, fully controlling which meant that he was married to his craft.


Closer to home, is my response to Ai Wei Wei's work at the National gallery of Victoria.

 In one instance there were  7677 images that Ai Wei Wei had taken and used in his blog, a constant recording of life around him; an obsessiveness to capture life around him.  There is a passion there which has allowed him to continue to create, appropriate and be discordant with the Chinese government.  Such forward thinking cannot occur without a passion and all consuming thinking for his art.

A marriage to one's craft is a natural occurrence it seems, life cannot penetrate the creator, but only in so much as to be a part of the creation.  Art and the craft of it, whether it be in writing, film, painting, sculpture, or photography become a part of the love and therefore that is where the life is.

Stella Dimadis
January, 2016.











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