A Pause for Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
The Artist’s Relationship with Time
By serving the work, rather than serving the time, you elevate it to the spiritual world.
A key issue with creative work is time. Quality versus quantity. Do you rush it out the door before it’s ready? Frédéric Back, the subject of the first interview in the first issue of Heron Dance, a man who later became a friend as well as an inspiration, talked frequently about time.
It took about five years to make the film The Man Who Planted Trees. Continuous work. There are about twenty thousand drawings in the film. Even the last film I did - The Mighty River - I worked for four years to make it closer to the message it should carry. I find it is fantastic to spend a long time writing a book or working on a piece of art. If you want a book to be something who really gives, who is a kind of gift to humanity, you should work on that a long time. Not just write and push it to the publisher.
Jean Giono took twenty three-years to write The Man Who Planted Trees. It ended up to be only seven pages of typewritten text… Then you come to the end, when you see the beginning very different. You have to change many parts of the book. You make a kind of psychic work on your book or on your film. I think that is important. I think it is better to go less at speed, but think more over, and take more out, in order to make the thing more useful and positive.
- Frédéric Back, animator, creator of the film The Man Who Planted Trees for which he received an Oscar.
The relationship of an artist to time is very much a relationship with integrity. Do you spend time on aspects of the work that have nothing to do with its power or beauty? Or financial sustainability? It is important that the work be sustainable financially.
Do you focus on quantity rather than quality of work? Do you serve the work? By serving the work, rather than expecting it to serve you, you elevate it to the spiritual realm.
Creative work of power and beauty, a quality life, require that careful thought be brought to the allocation of time.
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Journaling question:
How would you describe your relationship with time?