I often ask myself: am I a prolific artist?
It is hard to answer this question. The fact is that since October 2015, I regularly take photographs on the streets. If you want, you can call it street photography. Nevertheless, it is not essential for me how we call it. The fact is that in the period from October 2015 until the end of March 2018, I made ~44k photographs. 95% of them were made on the streets.
We can quickly count that I produced ~1,45k images per month (~360 pictures per week).
But, like in most cases in our lives: it is not the quantity but the quality that counts. It is an undeniable fact. Nevertheless, to receive class, to become the best, you have to be prolific. You must produce as much as you can. To develop and to move forward, you have to train. Without creating, hard-working, and educating, you will never become the one you dream of becoming. Not convinced enough? I encourage you to study biographies, and artistic legacy of such artists/philosophers like Seneca, Fryderyk Chopin, Fyodor Dostoevski, Jim Morrison, Bruce Lee, Salvador Dali, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Stanislaw Lem or David Bowie. Their lives were one enormous creation process until the very end. For example, when Salvador Dali first met Pablo Picasso in Paris in 1927, the latter showed Dali what does it mean to be prolific.
Let’s see what Dali wrote about it in his “My secret life” book:
“When I arrived at Picasso’s on Rue de la Boetie, I was as deeply moved and as full of respect as though I had an audience with the Pope.
– ‘I have come to see you,’ I said, ‘before visiting the Louvre.’
– ‘You’re quite right,’ Picasso answered.
I brought a small painting, carefully packed, which was called ‘Girl of Ampurdan.’ He looked at it for at least fifteen minutes and did not comment on whatever. After which we went up to the next story, where for two hours Picasso showed me quantities of his paintings, He kept going back and forth, dragging out great canvases which he placed against the easel. Then he went to fetch others among an infinity of canvases stacked in rows against the wall. I could see that he was going to enormous trouble.
At each new canvas, he cast me a glance filled with vivacity and intelligence so violent that it made me tremble. I left him without having made the slightest comment, either. In the end, on the landing of the stairs, just as I was about to leave, we exchanged a glance, which meant exactly, ‘You get the idea?’ ‘I get it'”.
I think I also understood Picasso’s idea. Now, I will leave you, my Dear Guest, with Pablo Picasso’s glance. His eyes will tell you whether you should be a prolific artist or not.
