Day forty-three: Steal.

Or borrow. Borrowing is good sometimes. So is copying.

Art can sometimes be a cult of originality. When you look a little deeper though, it's usually just a superficial cult. Paintings that look different but end up mining the same ideas. People saying old things with a few new words. Stealing is different. It goes to a deeper place, taking the foundation, what holds the work up.

The art that most moves me is like an onion. There are many many layers to peel back. And which layers are important? Which could be mined for more information? Some contemporary artists, like Bruce Nauman, or Mike Kelly, or Louise Bourgeois, they went through so many ways of working and so many approaches. You could steal from them for years and still be making something new.

It sounds odd, but it's true. Borrowing is great too. I think most contemporary aesthetic is borrowing, and recombining what's been borrowed. I spend hours in the library sometimes, looking for things that excite me or make me want to look again. I'm obsessed with these weird dolls Paul Klee made most recently. I also like to borrow palettes from magazines, taking the way they combine colors in fashion shoots and starting paintings with those collections of color.

Also, copying has it's place. If you're learning new techniques or trying to really master them, copying is a great way to do it. Some of you may have read The Goldfinch. I did not love the book, but I do love the painting, and it's a great one to copy if you're learning how to paint in oil.