The Artistic Impulse

Cindy (2013) by Chuck Close 

"It seems to me now, with greater reflection, that the value of experiencing another person’s art is not merely the work itself, but the opportunity it presents to connect with the interior impulse of another."

Wil S. Hylton, The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close

I love this quote because it captures so eloquently a familiar feeling. I love going to galleries and museums to see the manifested impulse of other artists. And I am fascinated even with my own impulses. I don't know "where they come from" as they say—a phrase that conjurs the image of an immigrant idea or a mysterious pipeline that ends at one's heart like some sort of interior creative water park.

As a playwright I sometimes try to articulate where an idea for a play comes from. Sometimes I know the seed, like the painterly book that illustrates Nabokov's synesthesia that led me to the winding path of research that grew to become Mystic in the Savage State. But sometimes the idea just presents itself somehow—it arrives. This is true of the idea for the play I have been writing for the past 6 weeks. There have been very clear points of inspiration on the journey: The premise for the play seemed to just reveal itself during a creative daydream as I drove to the coffee shop. Because I did not know how long the idea would stick around, I was sure to start writing notes as soon as I parked. The title came to me on another drive, but in a more physical presentation from the universe. On the license plate for a large truck were the words Semi and Permanent, side by side. The play is set in the wake of a young man who commits suicide. Creative daydreaming led me to understand that the character used to say that life was just semi-permanent. The title became Semi-Permanent. (It's a working title, so it too may be only semi-permanent.)

When I witness visual art pieces I regularly wonder to myself, consciously or not, "What inspired them to create this?" In this current reflection, I realize that I am more curious about what impulse drove them to this creation. What did they love about the materials, the lines and shapes and textures, the concepts of the piece? What were the moments of inspiration like—did ideas arrive quickly or slowly? Did the impulses intrude or were they invited in?

I often am fascinated to learn what artists say about their own work or, better yet, about their process. But sometimes I am happy not to know any background whatsoever, because my imagination becomes a playground for all the possibilities that their artwork stirs in me.

Very big things, very small things

I found a stone on the beach in Rhode Island. It's flat and round. It's round-ish. It has a band of one color stone running across the middle. That band is yellow-ish, or maybe I would call it "honey" colored especially because it looks like a band of petrified honey and that's what makes it great--when I look at it I am filled with wonder, considering how and when it was formed. The rest of the stone, the "top" and the "bottom" bands are slate grey. The kind of color that one might identify as a "stone-like" color of grey.

I started looking for other stones that were like it. Round, flat stones that had a solid band of another type of stone in the middle. I found a few.

Soon after I found them, I wanted to paint. I wanted to take paint to canvas explore how the shapes and colors met one another in these stones, these round stones with bands of other stones running through them as if they had been pressed together, the layers one on top of another. A few days later I saw an article about Jupiter. There was a picture of the planet in the article. It looked like my stones. Or, perhaps, my stones looked like Jupiter. Similar colors, similar roundness, similar wide band of color intersecting the roundness. I loved this connection, this not-so-accidental similarity.

I like how the very big things are often a lot like the very small things. And the other way around.

It's no surprise, I suppose, that the characters in my plays are fascinated by the same thing. For example, Alice, who works with maps, shares this story with her co-worker in Restoration/Conservation:

ALICE 

When I was little, I don't remember how old, father told me, “Alice, the world is your oyster.” The world is your oyster. He was so sincere. So earnest. I thought it must be something profound that he was telling me. But I didn't understand what it meant. So I pictured the world in an oyster. Little. And then I imagined how little we must be if the world was actually size of an oyster. After that, whenever I would see maps I would try to fit them, in my imagination, to the size of a little oyster. And then my imagination made it even smaller one later I learned that pearls came from oysters and so I pictured the world size of the pearl. It must've been around the same time that I learned that the world was round or at least understood it—maybe I had learned it before, but I understood that the world was round. I saw globes and some maps splattered across these globes. Painted on these globes. On these pearls. (A small moment) The delicate nature of these pages, of these maps. Their small size yet significant impact on their peers and on history.

To read the play, head this way.