When to Stop Learning

In education circles, especially at the post-graduate level, the term "lifelong learning" has become trendy. The idea in educators' eyes is to encourage the eventual graduate to continue to learn and investigate. These days, given the speed of information publishing and the unbelievable volume, it's critical to instill the habit of continued learning. The ideal is never to stop adding to one's fund of knowledge.

For artists, lifelong inquiry and boundary challenging should be the norm. Those in occupations that produce things--"makers" is the current buzzword--ought to investigate as many different materials, means, and methods of expression as possible. For me it's only through that kind of questioning and questing that advances have come in production of art. A new medium may send one off in the most productive direction, or facilitate new work in the medium originally chosen. A new genre may spark enormous creativity. It is the quest that provides the power.

So of course the answer to the question in the title of this post (when to stop learning) is: Never.

Here are few random lessons learned over several decades that have paid dividends and keep coming to mind:

• "Violate your edges" is a quote from my friend and mentor Bill Whitaker. What he means by

  

  Bill Whitaker giving a portrait demo, 2005

  that statement is just that you should paint across edges, then correct in order to establish depth and overlap. Without such treatment, edges are too often monotonous, uniformly hard or perhaps poorly-defined, and good edges make the painting sing. (Bill is a wonderful painter whose generous friendship and mentoring have been essential to me. I think of those words every day.)
• Spend more time looking than painting.  Another important lesson from Mr. Whitaker. A lot of people are eager to paint, to put down the ideas that are coming to them as they study an object or a person and try to translate paint into picture. Guilty. It isn't easy for me to slow my technique, spend time not just looking at something but actually studying it: how long is it? how tall? where are the angles and how do they relate? and so on. Spending the time to understand shapes, structures, light and dark, and all of the other aspects of an object actually shortens the painting time. And it can facilitate crisper brushwork since the artist has thought hard about the brush stroke to be applied. Overall, study of the motif makes it easier to paint.
• Paint like a millionaire. This one comes from a fellow student of art. The idea is to worry less

  

  "Secondaries," oil on panel, 2005

  about the cost of materials and more about learning how to use them. In that vein, it's important to use the best materials you can afford--top grade paint, durable and stable supports, and so on. Student grade materials are cheaper, yes, but may not perform to the necessary standards. That is, paint may have inert fillers (for example) that alter mixing properties or otherwise alter paint performance. Cheaper charcoal or graphite may have flaws or lack durability. And so on. A sports trainer of mine once admonished me to buy the best equipment I could afford. It's good advice and promotes learning.