03/16/2011

Having just read this, and the accompanying comments, I began considering the concept of artistic creation. Perhaps, I feel, it is a delicate balance, between two equally depriving extremes. We could call these two 'germination' and 'growth,' or 'internal construction' and 'external expression,' or any other such combination of terms as we might like; the point is that both are equally necessary for artistic creation to occur, but neither can overwhelm the other. If internal construction, germination, the muse begins to overwhelm the artistic process, then its successful expression in an external medium is jeopardized or even excluded altogether. If external expression, growth, the creation begins to overwhelm the artistic process, then the very expression itself suffers from a lack of inspired content and ultimately becomes an exercise not in art at all but only in a learned craft.