I’ve always believed that being an artist doesn’t mean you have to stay inside one particular box. A painter doesn’t have to spend every waking hour painting. A musician doesn’t have to think only in terms of songs. A writer doesn’t have to live entirely on the printed page. Sometimes exploring another art form is exactly what brings you back to your main art with a new perspective.
Throughout my life, I have explored painting, drawing, graphic design, writing, music, video and other forms of creative expression. I don’t necessarily see these as separate careers. To me, they are different languages for communicating ideas.
Sometimes an idea wants to be a painting. Sometimes it wants to be a song. Sometimes it needs several hundred pages to become a book.
Music as an Art Form
Music is particularly interesting because it combines creativity with time. A painting sits in front of you and allows you to decide how long you want to look at it. A song moves forward. Once you press play, you enter the musician’s timeline.
That makes songwriting and recording very different from painting.
When I paint, I’m dealing with composition, shape, line, color, texture and emotion. When I make music, many of those same ideas are still there, but they take different forms. Instead of color, there is tone. Instead of visual composition, there is musical arrangement. Instead of lines moving across a canvas, there are melodies moving through time.
Rhythm may be one of the oldest artistic tools human beings have.
Technology has also changed what musicians can do. Today a person can use a computer as part of the creative process, experimenting with keyboards, synthesizers, loops, beats, effects and digital recording. The computer becomes another instrument.
That doesn’t necessarily make the work less artistic. A watercolor brush is technology. An electric guitar is technology. A printing press is technology. A camera is technology. What matters is what the artist does with the tool.
Crossing the Borders Between Arts
I think some of the most interesting things happen when different art forms collide.
A book can contain illustrations. A painting can inspire a poem. A poem can become lyrics. Music can accompany a film. Graphic design can become part of an album cover. A performance can combine costumes, lighting, music, storytelling and visual art.
Once you start thinking this way, the borders between different arts become surprisingly thin.
That is one reason I don’t think artists should be afraid of experimenting outside their specialties.
You might be a painter who has never written a song.
Write one.
You might be a musician who has never painted.
Buy some inexpensive paints and see what happens.
You might be a writer who has never made a video.
Turn on the camera.
The result doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. In fact, being a beginner again can be refreshing because you temporarily escape the pressure of being “good.”
You get to play.
The Value of Experimentation
There is another benefit to exploring different art forms: failure becomes useful.
If I make a painting that doesn’t work, I might discover something that later becomes part of another painting. If I write something that doesn’t work as prose, perhaps there is a poem hiding inside it. If a musical experiment doesn’t become a finished song, maybe one rhythm or melody survives.
Creative work produces scraps.
Those scraps can become compost for something completely different.
Artists sometimes become trapped by their own identities. Someone becomes known as a watercolor painter, so suddenly everything has to be watercolor. Someone becomes known as a novelist, so every idea has to become a novel. Someone develops a recognizable musical style and becomes afraid to leave it.
But creativity doesn’t always respect your résumé.
Sometimes the most interesting question isn’t, “What kind of artist am I?”
It is simply:
“What do I want to make today?”
Art Is Bigger Than the Medium
I’ve spent much of my life exploring different ways of communicating creatively. Some experiments have been successful. Others haven’t. But I don’t consider the unsuccessful ones wasted time.
They are part of the exploration.
Painting teaches me things about writing. Writing teaches me things about music. Music teaches me things about rhythm that can find their way back into visual art. Technology introduces entirely new possibilities.
And somewhere in the middle of all those disciplines is the artist.
The tools change.
The medium changes.
The audience changes.
But the desire remains remarkably similar: take something that exists inside your imagination and somehow bring it into the world.
That may be the real art.
by Dan and Bonkers
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