I’m reading the Wayne Thiebaud video transcript (from the “70 Years of Painting” show), searching for juicy bits to share with you. They are not hard to find. Here’s what he has to say about advice he received from Robert Mallary that helped him “shape-up” as a painter.
“Work harder; develop a critical sense; understand what you are doing and know how to design problems which would get you to someplace where you thought you wanted to be… He would spend hours on what it was to interrogate a work of art: How to understand in in terms of its formal relationship… Make it darker, how to transfer it from, say, one kind of value structure to a higher structure, what would that do to it? What to do if you were to take all your color out of it and do it in black and white. Those options, which represent for a painter, I think, the tools of use and how to prepare for yourself always to be specific in order to take risks, to not be afraid of failure, make lots of work which is worth only throwing out. That was a very big and helpful exercise…
The “nerve of failure” is a very important aspect of painting and while it makes you uncomfortable and vulnerable, if you don’t elevate your desires and ambitions to some kind of level of reality in terms of the long tradition that you are a part of, however small, then you have the risk of ignobling that great tradition which we use and which we respect and which we are hopefully a part of.
