Series production

or is it: serial or serious?

I have just been typing a lengthy comment in response to Yellow and Lindsay's comment on the difference between collage and scrapbooking, when I thought I should just write it up as a new post.

So, here's some more thoughts on creativity and generic commercials.

Some of the issues that I had been wondering about to do with creativity is the slap-dash approach to produce many of the same paintings, cards, collage to flog them successfully. - My adventures into the depth of Etsy, and even more Ebay, quickly take me to sites that do exactly that.

The funny thing is that I often work in series, do several variations of the same theme - early ones are the Bedrock and Clouds paintings; and just yesterday I realised that I must have done the four scenes of the fields at my parents' place well over thirty times since January - in sketches, pen and ink, acrylics, oil, collage, gouache and pastel. So, there's plenty of repetition.

In particular now that I've found my abstract shapes and lines in the compositions, it doesn't take me long to divide up the canvas for that composition, go on to fill in colours - and then... hey - is it still there? The IT being elusive, the non-mechanic, the bit that makes it work. Or probably: the bits (plural) that still make it work, the mix, the dynamic.

The road to the blue trees WIP, Mixed Media Collage,
70x50cm on board, Detail

But then again, in many ways, it is the mechanic, the non-thinking that is important and helpful - to get to somewhere accidental and incidental amongst all the purpose and intention.

So, it's not really straightforward with the IT, is it? Just as well as that there's nothing wrong at all with decorating ones diary, making greeting cards etc. - do that myself, too.

...

Ach... it still verges on elitist posturing but I think I'll keep trying for some more explication on this.