The Pleasure Principle

 

What motivates some individuals to seek the path to creativity? The answers are as diverse, as numerous as

the forms that artistic endeavours pursue.  Some need to express anger, frustration or sorrow at life. Others to reflect periods in history either politically or narratively. Then there are those who strive to achieve beauty, a complex and mysterious quality. Beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eye...  No matter your motivation, creation requires the

artist to put subjective concerns aside.

 

Many artists marvel at the feeling they get upon regarding their own work, that some spirit came and made it when they weren’t watching. Such a pleasurable sensation, putting all conscious thinking aside, just losing oneself in layering colours, creating texture, drawing lines dictated by the soul, then standing back, regarding. How did it happen? Is the act all the same, placing notes or words in succession, feeling clay under your hands, or the resistance of materials? A marvel. A joy experienced by the creator.  We must not be overcome by frustration or disappointment in the object’s production. It is the act that is so pleasurably profound.

 

In this series of works I have concentrated on manifestations of beauty and joy in my daily experiences. Please share.

 

Alice Burton 2019