CHAPTER XII: ORIGINALITY
Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not through
striving. The search for originality seldom results in anything worth
having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being
original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the most useful advice
which you could receive is that you be always natural. Never be artificial
nor insincere; never copy another person’s subject, manner, or method,
with the intention of doing as he does. The most original things are
often the most simple, because they have come naturally from sincere
desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way.
If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. No two
people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. They do not look
alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike?
The attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the
most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting.
Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don’t try to paint what appeals to some one
else. If you like it, the do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as
to fully and completely convey just what it is that you like, unaffected by anything else.
And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and
because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will
not be like anything else that ever was - and that is originality.
But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive impressions and
emotions. And if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not
doing it again. There are always plenty of things - ideas, impressions, conceptions,
appreciations - waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of
freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing.
That is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang it on the wall, and
call it a name. The painter is the eye of the people.
He sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see.
The painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not
perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his
having seen it.
There is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which sees only facts as
facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate,
gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter’s eye
which sees and distinguishes is the painter’s brain which selects and arranges, using
facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts.