I just watched Chuck Close read a letter to his 14-year-old self. You should watch it too. Sorry about the ad at the beginning—the four minutes that follow are worth it, I promise. I’ll wait…

Good stuff, right?

Chuck Close was the commencement speaker at my graduation from art school. He’d just had a huge retrospective at MoMA earlier that year, and it was very exciting to have him there. Purchase College is divided up into several distinct small schools, each with its own admissions process, its own dean, and its own requirements. The graduation ceremony, however, is all-inclusive. The painters are sitting next to the biology majors are sitting next to the dancers are sitting next to the sociology people are sitting next to the filmmakers are sitting next to the designers.

But Chuck Close was really there to talk to us. The art students. This is part of what he said:

I’d like to say something to the parents of the art majors. This is probably not what you had in mind, you know? You hoped maybe—I don’t know, maybe medical school, maybe a degree in law, but I want to tell you that a life in art can be a wonderful life. Artists live better at near-poverty level income than yuppie bond traders do at much larger income.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of yuppie bond traders out there who are plenty happy with their lives and I certainly don’t deride them for that, but you know…the world is quick to judge someone who makes their living as an artist. The arts are considered expendable and disposable, as if their place in culture and modern society is not one of actual value, but merely something decorative and extraneous. It’s nice to have something to hang above the sofa, sure, but not if it means I’m going to have to pay more taxes! So it’s good to hear something like that from a guy like Chuck Close when you’re about to embark on a career path that will likely always feel a bit tenuous.

(Of course, I was created and raised by two artists who already understood and were actively living this lesson, so I’m pretty sure they did have “this” in mind. Actually, what they had in mind was that their children would become whatever they wanted to. I’d like to think they’d still love me even if I’d become a yuppie bond trader.)

But back to that video! I’ve watched it a number of times now, and I keep dwelling on this:

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.
Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.
Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

I’ve heard Chuck Close use that line before, but right now it speaks so directly to how I’ve been feeling about inspiration, appropriation, value, context, and work ethics. Far be it from me to claim to be free from inspiration, but I do think Close is right. If you imagine your creative work as a spectrum, you’d have the finding and saving of the work of others on one end, and “showing up and getting to work” on the other. Life doesn’t have to exist solely within the latter part of the spectrum, of course, but the more time we spend there (and, conversely, the less time we spend poring over “inspiration”), the more we likely we are to produce work that is truly the result of what we set out to do when we decided a life in the arts was what we wanted.

When someone asks me what I’m inspired by (easily my least favorite question), the first answer that always comes to me is EVERYTHING. Or if not every thing, then every possibility of a thing. I’m constantly looking at shapes and patterns and colors, whether in nature or in art or in the way my shoes happen to be sitting in front of the closet door. Every food wrapper is considered. Furniture. Bill envelopes. Music. EVERYTHING. It doesn’t have a start or end!

Because of this, inspirational stimulation can easily become overwhelming for me. I’ve never had an inspiration board/mood board/whatever board—I find them oppressive. Aside from the pressure of influence, I dislike the act of stripping context from another person’s work. And yes, I do do that here on this blog sometimes—but I cannot have it around me when I’m in “design mode.” I show up, and I get to work. OK, most of the time. Sometimes I’m an amateur.

So here are my lessons for artist/designer types, as inspired (oops) by Chuck Close:

Not every decision you make has to be crowdsourced beforehand. Trust your gut and keep it to yourself while you follow through.

It’s OK to strive to accomplish things that may never lead to financial reward. More than OK, actually.

Try to put a limit on the amount of time you spend searching for and cataloging images for the sake of inspiration. Think more about appreciating these things for what they are, and not just how you can apply them to your own work.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

And hey, maybe yuppie bond traders can apply these things to their work, too.

Thanks to Kelly at LPP for sharing the video.