Hitting a little Close to home

This has been hanging around as an active tab in my browser window for weeks. I just can't bring myself to delete it's daily reminder. It's an article Working in Close It's a riff from a productivity blog, 43 Folders, about the working approach used by Chuck Close, an extraordinary artist who's life is as interesting as his work, which appears in low-rent spaces like The Met, MoMa, the Getty, and the National Gallery of Australia. But I especially like the pull-quote from blogger Brian Oberkirch, summing up the implication of Close's approach to work and creativity: And, sorry, all those romantic notions you have of absinthe spoons, manic episodes and Kerouac-like rambling on a long roll of butcher paper really aren’t operative. Creative work is mostly showing up every day and enduring a million tiny failures as you feel your way to something a bit new. What a great message for those of us who complain, occasionally, of having un-ideal conditions to create, or the wrong mind-set, or the wrong flavour of yogurt, or whatever. Just get on with it. That is the work of creativity: just getting on with it. “Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.” — Chuck Close (Discovered via Beautiful & Depraved, which continues to knock me out.)