How Finding Your "Why" Can Transform Your Art [35]
Art Juice: A podcast for artists, creatives and art lovers
Louise Fletcher/Alice Sheridan
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2019
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s discussion was inspired by a book and TED talk by Simon Sinek, both entitled ‘Find Your Why.’ Sinek's main point is that when you know the purpose of what you are doing, it is so much easier to make the right decisions, achieve good results, and sell it to others.
As artists, we can explore this on several levels - why do I make my art? Why am I making this particular series of paintings? And, at the granular level, why am I making this one specific painting?
Our wide-ranging conversation spans the desire to create things, the need to be seen, the drive to communicate our internal experience, and whether what we are really seeking is love. (Deep stuff!) We also get into how you find your purpose. It isn’t something you can just come up with in 5 minutes. For most of us, it is a gradual process of discovery and it arises from the work we do. We also acknowledge that so much of this changes over time - even if we know our why at this moment, it may well change in future years.
Mentioned
Simon Sinek TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
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Credits
"Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I seem to recall once trailing my mom around the kitchen really late in the evening she still brings this up saying |
| 0:05.6 | but why mom and is there a god and what and she was like trying to make sandwiches for lunch the next day |
| 0:12.1 | she's like I have no idea. |
| 0:14.7 | Did she then say, ask your father? Hi, generous and |
| 0:33.5 | get you thinking with me Louise Fletcher and me Alice Sheridan. |
| 0:38.5 | This week we have a great topic we're going to be talking about finding our why. Our why for why we paint altogether, |
| 0:47.7 | our why for specific series and maybe even our wife for a single painting. But first of all, let's just catch up and Alice, you |
| 0:56.9 | look like you've had a really exciting week because I've been looking on Instagram, so tell me |
| 1:00.9 | what you've been up to. It feels like it's been longer than a week actually. |
| 1:04.0 | It feels like I've had two weeks squashed into one. |
| 1:06.0 | So most of it is I had a little, |
| 1:10.0 | I suppose you might call it an artist date but it went on for about four days so I had a little bit of time it felt like a kind of bonus summer holiday |
| 1:20.1 | but I'm going to talk about that in what's inspired and the rest of what I've been |
| 1:24.9 | working on this week has been full on hands on literally this morning hands on |
| 1:31.7 | nitty gritty of moving stuff into the new studio. So that has |
| 1:36.6 | involved trying to coordinate finding a timber yard deliveries when the guys |
| 1:42.0 | are going to be able to come and build this false wall |
| 1:44.5 | could it come on Saturday could I hire a van if I had to hire a van it has to be a |
| 1:50.3 | full day just those kind of weird logistics of just getting everything there |
| 1:56.0 | that I needed. It feels like I'm moving house, not just like moving a few painting things |
| 2:01.1 | into an empty room, which should should be simple shouldn't it? |
| 2:03.2 | Yeah it's not. I pictured it as oh Alice will like fill up the car with all |
... |
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