Blog # 2: Artist Quote

I completely agree with Scott Adams: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." I think the first premise that he is using is that not everything is art, or not everything is good art, or not all art is good enough to be called art. However you want to say it. If we want to have any real definition of art at all then we must agree that some things are going to be excluded. I think that his second premise is that art must be creative. It cannot be a reproduction or an imitation, it has to be unique and special. So while the artist has to start by trying to make pieces that are creative, he then has to narrow it down to what is good. We have to ask whether or not it has skill created into it, whether or not it evokes deep mental thinking, whether or not it interpolates us, if it's timeless, and any other criteria that one would use to define art. It's only when you mix creativity with skill and foresight that you can really call something art. If you're just going to call anything that has creativity or evokes emotion art, then you might as well not even discuss art because everything has creativity, so it's just a waste of time.
Knowing when to eliminate things that don't quite meet the cut is a part of writing as well. First you write a rough draft and then you go back and edit it. You have to know what sentences and what thoughts or arguments are unhelpful for your paper. The major difference between writing a paper and making a piece of art would be that when you are making a piece of art you do not have the luxury of going back and editing it. You usually have to learn from your mistake and start all over again. If you make a bad stroke on a canvas and ruin your painting you can't just say that you were being creative, you have to admit that you messed up and start with a new canvas. That is why art takes a lot of skill. One bad mistake could ruin the whole piece.