Another good one Wayne.
There's a book you may have heard of "Steal Like an Artist"
excerpt:
Every artist gets asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”
How does an artist look at the world? First, you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it. When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what’s “good” and what’s “bad”—there’s only stuff worth stealing, and stuff that’s not worth stealing. Everything is up for grabs. If you don’t find something worth stealing today, you might find it worth stealing tomorrow or a month or a year from now.
“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” — David Bowie
The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.
What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
As the French writer André Gide put it, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” — William Ralph Inge
Book summary, key ideas and quotes from Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. Published or updated on: Feb 28, 2023 by Matthew Vere.
www.matthewvere.com
It's reassuring to hear this because my current painting is full of stolen stuff. So I'm feeling a bit like you are here. And I'm finding that I can attempt to steal a Van Gogh field of his brushstrokes but .....I'm not Van Gogh.