Brush and Sword

The newsletter by Sameer Sharma

Issue #1

From Head to Heart, From Craft to Art-Master technique to transcend it.

"Still Movement" oil on canvas board. Click for more info.

As both a visual artist of painting and a martial arts of Aikido and Tai Chi, I've found that technical skill in any art form can become a purgatory where one can get stuck indefinitely. We can easily mistake technical mastery with artistry. Yet, here lies the paradox-you cannot make art without mastering the technical skills. Then, you must let go of the technical skills to make art.

Mistaking the map for the territory

When I first began studying painting and martial arts, I was all about the technical skills. Drawing with accuracy, painting photo-realistically, executing precise joint locks, and moving with precise alignment were my "raison d'etre". This lasted for years. With more skill came results and accolades that fed the desire for even more technical skill.

The need for perfect technique, whether through a paintbrush or a sword, was an addiction that kept me on the technique hamster wheel for years. Blinded by my pursuit for technical perfection, I was unaware that I was stifling my self-expression and authentic voice. Like the ghost of Jacob Marley, I was forging my own chains of bondage, link by link.

Frank Finlay as Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens', "A Christmas Carol"

Both my martial arts and my painting started to feel robotic, formulaic and lifeless. I felt more like a technician than an artist. Like poor Jacob Marley, I was shackled by my own technical skill. I had sacrificed feeling, emotion, and intuition for technical precision. Like the Zen expression,

The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.

I had mistaken the map for the territory.

Freedom through surrender

A moment of frustration led to a moment of insight. In Zen Buddhism, this flash of insight is called, "satori". Satori is a moment of sudden awakening or enlightenment through intuitive knowing. In my case, it wasn't enlightenment but a realization from a state of surrender.

I realized that I could only move so fast, strike so hard and paint with so much technical precision. I was hitting the limits of my physical ability. Technique had become like training wheels on a bike. Once you can ride, they get in the way.

At this point, the challenge was letting go of technique. This is easier said than done. The shadow side of being technically skilled is that your ego's sense of security and your identity becomes dependent on this very fragile structure. The slightest wind of self-doubt, and criticism can blow it to the ground. This self-doubt kept me chasing techniques for years. The sense of not being good enough fueled my obsession to the point of burn out.

In service to the heart

Yet, this burnout was a type of grace. I was forced to reassess my approach and how I had let its results define me. Along the path of mastery, there comes a point when you can no longer progress with just technical and physical ability. At some point, the rational, analytical mind and physical ability can take you no further. Once its done the job of acquiring data, analyzing, measuring, and doing, it must hand the reins over to the heart.

By heart, I mean that innate, feeling sense from where insight, intuition and genius arise. This is when a dialogue emerges between the artist and her art. The work whispers; telling you what needs to happen next. "Psst. Put this brush stroke here. Add a bit more yellow ochre there. Relax the tension in your arm," it says.

Intuition is the soft tread of the unseen guest.- Joseph Murphy

The trick is to listen- to get out of your own way and really listen to what the work is saying. I can only hear this voice from a state of surrender and emptiness. When the authoritative voice of my analytical mind is quiet, the soft voice of heart becomes audible. It never shouts, instructs, or demands. It's a gentle nudge, a modest suggestion, a soft caress. If I'm still stuck in my head, I won't hear it.

The heart will never raise its voice and shout. To hear it, I must turn down the noise in my head. The heart's wisdom can only be gained by trading doing for being, movement for stillness, and noise for silence.

But you can't dismiss technique

This is a relay race. The head begins the creative journey sprinting off at the shot of the starting pistol. It gathers, measures, compares and repeats until the mind and body's analytical and motor skills become subconscious. The head and the body expend enormous energy at this early stage in doing. This is necessary. Many artists want to shortcut this process and go straight to the expressive feeling stage. This is a mistake whose dire consequences will only be felt later; maybe when it's too late.

There is an actual word for this, "deskilling".

[Deskilling in art is] a persistent effort to eliminate artisanal competence and other forms of manual virtuosity from the horizon of both artist competence and aesthetic valuation".

- Art historian, Benjamin Buchloh.

Unfortunately, deskilling is promoted in art schools, where concepts are praised and technical skills denounced. Artsist are encouraged to find their voice and express themselves. But, they are not taught the technical skills to do so. Technical skills are considered a hindrance to creative expression.

I've also witnessed this in martial arts where flowing, graceful movement is mistaken for martial skill. Understanding proper body mechanics, alignment and martial application is considered crude and inharmonious. A student can spend years performing graceful, flowing movement with no idea of its practical application. To the untrained eye, it looks correct. It's not until one's ability is tested under pressure through either sparring, or other intense physical contact, that the de-skilled conceptual veneer peels off.

I've seen black belts crumble when faced with just a moderate bit of physical pressure. Their movements look graceful when done solo. But when asked to demonstrate their technique against a real attack, they fall apart. This is followed by excuses like: "He didn't attack me properly," or "He's a bad training partner." This would be the equivalent of me getting angry at my paint brushes for not making the right brushstroke.

Technical skill cannot be diminished or side-stepped. It's the long, narrow corridor that must be traversed to eventually reach the wide open plane of creative self-expression. If you gloss over technique, your art will suffer. Eventually, you'll be forced to come to terms with its deficiency. Usually, this is revealed in the form of bad artwork that looks awkward and unskilled- proportions are off, colors have no harmony, brushwork feels forced, and any other technical shortcoming that hinders rather than enables self-expression.

The equivalent in martial arts is empty movement that lacks substance and martial application. My Tai Chi teacher likes to quote an old Chinese saying that roughly translates as, "Looks good, but it's useless."

The yin and yang of the creative process

I can only create "art" once I've invested enough time developing the technical skills needed for its expression. The rigor of technical practice gives the means to hear the heart and follow its intuitive guidance. When I'm confident with my technique, I feel free to experiment, and trust myself. My practice has a sense of ease and play that it otherwise would not if I was concerned about my technical skill, or lack thereof.

This is the great polarity, the yin and yang of creativity. Technical proficiency allows creative self-expression. The soft, intuitive, "yin" energy of creativite expression requires the hard, structured "yang" energy of technical practice. It's a symbiotic relationship that is always informing, and balancing itself. Like the yin/yang symbol, both technique and intuitive feeling have a bit of both in each other. Technique is never devoid of feeling and feeling is never without structure.

When both of these energies are in balance, the result for me is art- authentic, creative expression supported through a framework of technical precision. In my practices, one cannot exist without the other.

Art- a dance of the dervish

The path from the head to the heart, from technical craft to expressive art, is not straight. It's circular. The artist moves like a Sufi dervish, whirling ecstatically between the states of polarity- disciple/freedom, thinking/feeling, doing/being structure/formless, hard/soft, stillness/movement, and yielding/advancing.

This dance between the head and the heart is the art. The painting, sculpture, music, or performance is simply a record of this dance. It's a product of the head and heart working in harmony to create something greater than what either could create on their own. As an artist, I do my best to set this dance in motion, and then get out of the way. It is both the process and the product.

Share your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you!

Best,