Is there such a thing as talent? I don’t mean extraordinary, genius kind of talent. I mean ordinary talent, the kind that many artists have that helps them produce very nice, very accomplished work. Is it talent, or is it hard work and tenacity?

Oh sure, there are those very few ’geniuses’ that seem to rise above the rest, for whom it seems natural, almost easy, to produce masterpieces. I’m not talking about them right now.

For most artists, talent, ie being able to produce good accomplished paintings (or sculptures, or whatever), comes at a high price. That price includes a lot of time spent learning; it includes practicing, over and over; it means making painting a priority; it means making time for it even in the face of a very busy life; it means persevering and staying with it, even when things aren’t going too well; it means overcoming discouragement; it means struggling; it means being afraid of failing and doing it anyway.

The word talent implies that it is a gift, that it is easy; it seems to indicate that it is something one is born with and we just have to use it. I don’t agree with that. The dictionary defines talent as ’a special natural ability or aptitude’ or ’a marked innate ability’. As far as I’m concerned, talent is the result of hard work and I would rather be called ’accomplished’ than ’talented’, because that at least indicates that there was effort involved rather than it being a gift given to me.

The price of talent is courage, determination, perseverance, and most of all, hard work. To achieve talent, you need the will and the tenacity to keep working at it until you get good.

Film maker Sam Goldwyn said "The harder I work, the luckier I get”. My version of that would be: "The harder I work, the more talented I get".

Having said all this, it wouldn’t be right for me to leave it at that. I have to say that talent may come at a price, but the rewards are great. The feeling of accomplishment when finishing a piece that I like is wonderful, and the sense of pride when someone tells me they like my work is very real.

So, yes, it’s hard work, but it’s worth it.

Suzette

Do you ever worry that your work is not bad, but not great? That it is (heaven forbid) mediocre. That horrible word, mediocre. Wouldn’t you rather be terrible than mediocre?

Here is one of my favourite quotes, from Ayn Rand:

      "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours".

The first sentence, "....the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all..." is so well put. I know for me it is a real fear, the fear of being caught in the ’hopeless swamp of the not-quite’.

Diane Overmyer, of Wakarusa, IN, USA, says: "You need to be the best or you need to be different". That might be one answer to the problem of mediocrity. If you can’t make that scene every bit as good or better than anyone else, why not try to do something different; change the scene, change the mood, make it more painterly, or more abstract; be more bold in your approach to colour or style; do something to distinguish it from all the others.

All my life, that’s been my philosophy; if I can’t be better, then I want to distinguish myself some other way. I don’t want to be one of the crowd. I want to stand out.

I recently read a book on success (The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). What an interesting book; I would recommend it to anyone. The bottom line of this book for me was that at this stage of my life, the best thing I can do to improve my chances of success, is practice, practice, practice, work, work, work. So many factors are outside of our control in achieving success, but that one is not. That one is entirely up to me.

So, bottom line, the more I work, the better I will become, and that is the only way to get myself out of the ’swamp of the not-quite’.

Suzette