I’ve been getting ready for another open studio weekend and this old Chinese fable has been on my mind lately so I thought I’d share it. (The open studio will be in March and I always like to prepare way ahead.)
There was once an artist who specialized in drawing Roosters. He travelled from village to village with his work and everyone marvelled at the realistic qualities of his art.
One day a rich patron asked the artist to draw a tiger for him. ‘Oh, I have no experience drawing Tigers.’ said the artist. ‘When I come back next time I will do my best to draw you a Tiger.’
The patron was satisfied with this and told the artist to call on him the next time he passed through the village. The artist went away and for nearly a year he practiced drawing nothing but tigers. A year later, when he was happy with his work, the artist passed through the village and called on the rich patron. The artist knew this man was extremely particular about everything so the artist had waited until calling upon the man to draw for him. He wanted to make sure he drew the tiger exactly as his patron wanted. So, after listening to the man for a while and understanding precisely what he desired the artist quickly and efficiently drew a tiger. He handed the work over to the patron who was very happy and said, ‘Yes! This is wonderful! You have given me exactly what I want! I will buy this drawing! How much is it?’ The artist told the patron his price. ‘WHAT!?’ said the patron. ‘That is very expensive! I mean to say it only took you a couple of minutes to draw this for me.’
The moral of the story: Never underestimate the amount of effort, time, passion, thought, imagination and (last but certainly not least) soul that goes into art and hand crafted works!
No comments:
Post a Comment