Keap those ideas coming!

I attended my final Keap seminar today, for running after school art clubs, and still can't get over how generous people are with their ideas and experience. Some of the artists I've come across recently are much more likely to keep their ideas under wraps for fear of you stealing them and having more success with them than they did. The sharing of ideas seems a more mature approach to me; it engenders trust and support between a group of professionals and can even have the wonderful advantage of inspiring new and better ideas than you had in the first place!

I do wonder though, if this particular group of people are sharing ideas in this case because they are being educators, rather than solely artists, and perhaps it's the educators in them that want to share, rather than the artists.

Maybe artists don't appear to share ideas because their ideas are in some way intangible and nebulous, until they exist as more than something in the mind. Maybe an artist just has to make something in order to communicate that idea, rather than vocalise the idea first and develop it that way. Of course there's also the delicate matter of an artist's self-esteem (mine is exceptionally delicate!) and trying to articulate something can seem a cumbersome and painful experience when 'a picture can say a thousand words'. Who wants to look a fool when trying to describe the thoughts in your head when you can actually look quite good if you just go ahead and make them into something! Until, of course, you go ahead and make it and realise it was actually complete rubbish and you've got to remake it and develop the 'idea'. Which makes me wonder (again): what exactly is the idea? When do those nebulous thoughts become something 'concrete' called an idea? Talking to other artists it would seem the 'idea' often doesn't become clear until it's made; so is the thing that you've made the idea - does an artist in that sense literally make an idea? I'm questioning myself into a corner here, or 'round in bloody circles at any rate, I'm totally confused - what was I on about?!!!

Oh yes, Keap! We had some good ideas today! Next week I get to put them into practice at my first art club, but they'll probably be rubbish and I'll have to rework them - again, and again. And probably again.