Stop Painting The Same Apple

We challenge the habit of repeating the same subject until it turns into a creative hiding place. We argue for using hard won technique as a springboard into bigger ideas, broader subjects, and richer visual stories. 

• questioning why we repeat the same painting subject 
• respecting mastery while rejecting endless looping 
• expanding from one object to new subjects and materials 
• exploring the full range of fruit and beyond 
• building gardens, landscapes, and story driven scenes 
• pushing skills, vision, and risk tolerance into new work 

Transcript

Why Repeat The Same Subject

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Why are you painting the same thing over and over again? And that's the theme for today. That's the theme for right now. Why are you painting the same items and the same concepts and the same designs and the same creations over and over and over? If you painted a pear, something you can eat, a pear or an apple, and you painted it 10 times, and you perfected that logic, like you made it the most magnificent apple on the planet, and you glazed it just right, and you varnished it just right, and you used the coloring just right, and you use the shading just right, and you use the lighting just right. Why do you need to paint it 50 more times? Now that's just me speaking, and the reason why I brought that up is not to give anybody a dig. Bless you for the ability to paint those fantastic uh apples, because you can probably paint them far better than I can. Um my point here is to take your abilities. If you can paint at that level, to take your abilities and expand. Instead of just painting apples, maybe you want to paint some bananas, maybe you want to paint some pears, maybe you want to paint some cherries, maybe you want to paint some other types of fruits. Um what I'm saying is expand your reach to explore all the other possibilities of the vegetable and fruit family and then go beyond. Create a garden with all this fruit in it, create a landscape with all these trees in it, banana trees and so forth, and pineapple trees and so forth. Create these beautiful storylines and put your fruit in it. So I'm not putting a dig on anybody that's painting the same thing over and over again. What I'm saying is look for what you haven't done yet. Try something that you haven't done yet. Go beyond what can be done and test the waters on all your different skills and talents and exceed your unbelievable vision and throttle it to unbelievable levels. And let's see what you can make. That's all I'm saying there.