The Craftsman's Journey
The 'painting' never ends.
Arshile Gorky, Enigmatic Combat, 1936-1937, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Living our Ikigai is an expression of our art.
Whether literal art like oil painting or something along the lines of my running, which I consider my art.
Renown painter Arshile Gorky speaks to the endless nature of creating our art. It is never finished. We are always exploring, refining, honing, and perfecting it.
"I don't like that word 'finish.’ When something is finished, that means it's dead, doesn't it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while.
I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out.
Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often.
The thing to do is always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting."
Painter Arshile Gorky on the endless nature of craftsmanship
🌱 What does Gorky mean to ‘never finish painting?’
🌱 What would you describe as your art?
I do like the concept on some things about not finishing but others need to be finished in life and move on not to have to return to it!
There’s no finality to anything, even if we fallaciously think we’ve ended it or finished something. You just leave it to pursue other things while it still continues unfinished, unfinishable. You return to it and pick up from where you left. You may grow out of it, yet It outlives you.