Failure and Sandwiches

I am thinking that failing is the only way one can approach making "good" art. I think that without it, and the subsequent collapse of ego, the true painting cannot begin. Until this event, a failure, we can rely upon what we know, what works, and the results of what has come before. What I do not think we can do is push past what we have done before and create something new that surprises and challenges us. It seems that it is really only when I am lost that I can find the painting. Otherwise, I am just repeating myself, repeating the works of others, relying on and developing from the point of a style, and not making something that is really all that good.

Maybe this is why I like to do so many things, why I get stuck sometimes and cannot finish a thing, and the things I do finish are better than I am capable of doing through skill, talent, knowledge, what have you. I like being in the unknown, but crave the illusion that others' successes came out of knowing what they were doing or where they were going.

Maybe this is why I have always doubted the value of my work, always looked at what the other, more financially successful artists were doing, even though I felt that some of them were only stealing from more talented and original artists and passing it off as their own. Some of them seem to have a confidence I lack. I don't know. Like I said, it is an illusion that things are easier, that they have confidence.

I had anger for many years toward artists who steal blatantly from others. Especially when this theft resulted in financial gain for them. I was jealous of their success and my failure. These are artists whose work I actually looked up to and thought was somehow better than mine. The real failure was letting fear stop me from doing what I wanted and paying the other artists any attention. Though my anger is gone, I no longer see their work as having any value to me. I see it as just them trying on hats, wanting to do what they loved, and maybe not as conscious of their thefts. At any rate, is it really possible for a work to be "better" than another. I am on the fence on this.

I was making sandwiches this morning for my son Gabriel and myself. And I felt, that I was only really making good sandwiches, being a good father, by completely forgetting about myself and focussing on his welfare, his well being, and making a sandwich.