ABSTRACT
The Success Mechanism within you can work in the same way to produce “creative doing ” as it does to produce “creative ideas. ” Skill in any performance, whether it be in sports, in playing the piano, in conversation, or in selling merchandise, consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed, but in relaxing, and letting the job do itself through you. Creative performance is spontaneous and “natural” as opposed to self-conscious and studied. The most skilled pianist in the world could never play a simple composition if he tried to consciously think out just which fi nger should strike which key — while he was playing. He has given conscious thought to this matter previously — while learning, and has practiced until his actions become automatic and habitlike… conscious effort inhibits and “jams” the automatic creative mechanism …”
I think the interesting thing is that the artist can and must, sooner than the pianist, cease that conscious effort and go for the spontaneous performance. If I remember correctly, it was Robert Henri who said, “If an artist had limited knowledge but used that limited knowledge creatively, he could paint a masterpiece.” We’re trying to do these things in the evening Gesture Classes. Not to use the class to study anatomy, the details of attire, or shadow, but to take what we know — no matter how little and go for the creative performance — the gesture. Anatomy is something every artist should know, but not to the neglect of gesture. All the characters we will be called upon to draw do not have the kind of anatomy we learn in the typical anatomy class, but they all carry out their roles by means of gestures.
