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Jacqueline, it sounds as though you've rubbed elbows with a few folks who perhaps were jealous of your interest in and talent for drawing well, but they had their agendas and you have your own work to do. Part of their work, perhaps even unknown to them, might well have been to provide the sort of provocation that would make you all the more diligent in perfecting your skills, a sort of irritant around which the pearl of your own talent would develop. Now you are privileged to have acquired a good deal of facility in the drawing arts and you're poised to take advantage of the swelling of interest in well-crafted realistic representational work. I'm unable to attribute this paraphrase, but I recently read someone's advice to the effect that "Some of the Divine Masters who come into your life are going to be real SOB's."
As to this matter of the ends justifying the means, my current perspective is that while I am of course always delighted to have a piece turn out well, and I'm not embarrassed to have others share in my delight, the truth is that I'm usually a little disappointed when a piece is finished, when the "ends" have arrived, because it's in the "means" that I have all my fun. That's where I get to play, to solve problems, to work out ideas, to watch an image come alive from underneath my brush. And while I have said earlier that, yes, sometimes I just have to -- or for whatever reasons simply choose to -- use various mechanical aids in the process, I find that to the extent I do so, some of the fun that is really the only reason I paint is diminished. The integrity of the final piece may not be compromised, but my enjoyment of the process, and what I learn from that process, is, and so I try to keep to a minimum my reliance on implements or procedures that displace part of the creative fun. I'm hedonistic, I guess -- I do what's necessary to maximize my pleasure in this beauty-filled vocation.
Steven
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