During the week I had a quick back and forth on Instagram with the legendary Bruce Whatley. I am always deeply grateful when people with way more experience than me in anything offer a new perspective or light up a path that they’ve followed, potentially before I get there.
The thing I love about experts in their field is that they’re able to summarise such complex ideas so simply – like a master craftsman honing a piece of wood with ‘just the right’ touch so that a few simple strokes reveals a figure.
The secret seems to be to find the way you make marks that is being true to yourself – Bruce Whatley
And, although we were discussing this in art context – the physical marks on paper – it can so easily be abstracted to life. The whole point of this thing is to make marks that is being true to yourself. We spend so much time living a life that others want us to lead (or expect us to lead), that to cast that expectation aside is one of the most difficult things any artist, or human, can do. But it’s also, quite likely, the point of it all.