Attention Span and the Great Divide Between Mastery and Mediocrity

We live at a time when those with the shortest attention spans have become the target audience for most forms of mass media. One of our biggest challenges as Artists is to maintain focus regardless of life's barrage of important responsibilities, time-sucking tasks and mindless distractions. If one of our goals is to achieve greatness in our heartfelt endeavors then we will need to be vigilant in building and refining the skills, tools and habits that serve to protect our persistent practice.

A message to the makers; we are the ones that rearrange the present to design the future. We frequently question the status quo and are ever diligent in our pursuits to improve...sometimes to a fault. Let us not forget who we are nor the difference that artists have made throughout history. I am writing this to myself and all those who are driven to create. We are capable of making important differences in people's lives. Art has and will continue to define our world.

Actors and Builders, Choreographers and Directors, Fighters, Inventors, Musicians and Painters, Salespeople and Sculptors...whatever your art form, every age must have it's masters.

Who has inspired you?

For me, I have my own artistic heroes; Alex Grey, M.C.Escher, George Lucas, Jim Henson, Ang Lee, Bruce Lee and Stan Lee just to name a few (that's a lot of Lee's). These artisans have each redefined their genre, or created new ones. By focusing intently and following through on their personal commitments to honest expression, hard work and artistic integrity, they have each achieved great heights as artists and humans. They have each created countless shining examples of works which have touched the hearts, minds and lives of millions upon millions of human beings. Not that they worked alone, they collaborated with and made jobs for hundreds, maybe thousands of creative and talented movers and makers. As innovators, they have each group-birthed seamlessly virtual universes...within which many generations of minds and bodies have dove into, fully experienced, learned from, and even incorporated into their deep psyches and dominant thoughts.

I can envision a day when I, too, will make a positive, lasting difference in the world using art of some sort . Like you, I aspire to use my own artistic skills to make an impact on the times and to affect others' lives in a positive way.

It is my belief that finding, taking or making the time to regularly manifest your own art is an essential ingredient to live a full life. Complete artistic immersion is always an ideal state yet rarely easy state to obtain. I find myself on the go all day long, go...go...go...and then I find it all too easy to be lazy at night.

As a father of two young boys I naturally prioritize my parental and provider-type responsibilities. For my sanity or my ego or maybe just to fulfill my sense of purpose I need to keep a bit at play and regularly enter into artistic endeavors of any type. My love of creating visual art has never faded, although not only in the form of painting and drawing. together, my family will make crafts together, or my boys and I will record and edit a video. I find myself making Mindcraft 3D paper models and Thomas the Tank Engine drawings almost every night, one for each boy. It has become habitual for both Avery and Wylder to request very specific drawings at the end of their bedtime routine. Every...single...night. I know that I'm setting unreasonable expectations which will be tough to continuously live up to. Still, I find myself awake, well past midnight, drawing characters that my kids love and talk about when they wake up every morning. I haven't yet changed the world , at least not like my heroes have. I've made only a small difference so far, but little drawings and letters with breakfast seem to mean the world to my little guys.

Now, our art may be anything, any type activity or creation, anything that we love to do or be or make with all of our emotions invested in it. Your art may be as a medic or a mechanic, a programmer or a plummer, even a garbage collector. I have found that artistry is in one's mindset. I hope you know what your art is, I've found that mine can be a way of being, a way of working, a way of thinking even. Where there is a possibility for improvement and you actual take on that challenge, you can achieve a higher level of expertise in your field. If you love what you do, while you improve, it is your art. Give it your all.

We may chose to do it (whatever it is for you) for it's own sake, or we may be fulfilling a destiny...only the ripples of time will tell. All we can do is focus on what we are doing, while we are doing it, and do it completely. It is only with our entire attention, focused singularly, like a laser beam, that we can achieve mastery and change the world. Every industry is open for more artistic heroes, those who continuously master their own style of it and change the course of history.

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