I saw an interview with Paul Simon last week in which he spoke about his new album, Seven Psalms. He claimed that inspiration for the new music and album title came to him in a dream. Even though he’s not a religious person, the music and lyrics feel very spiritual.

Artists are often asked where they get their inspiration. Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Malcolm Gladwell expanded on this idea his book “Outliers” when he wrote, “It takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials, like playing the violin or getting as good as Bill Gates.”

I often remind myself of this as I’m struggling with a new painting or trying out a different technique. There are many more failures than successes. If you don’t have passion for the process, you’ll give up way before you have a chance to improve. It’s human nature to let the failures hurt more than the satisfaction of a success.

A visual artist first must please themselves before they can please anyone else. What we show as finished is only a small piece of what we work on. A peek behind the curtain would show that each painting is the result of many starts and stops. I often post slide shows of the stages of a painting. I try to keep this visual diary to remember how I started and what the painting’s journey was. It’s helpful to avoid mistakes and replicate what works.

My daughter is a classical musician. She started at age 10 and has practiced nearly every single day since then, sometimes for hours at a time. She’s sat for countless “blind” auditions with orchestras all over the country. Most often, it’s a “no”, but when it’s a “yes” the success is sweet. In her post-graduate residency at Bard College, the orchestra played a concert at Carnegie Hall. As I saw her on that famous stage, I couldn’t help but remember the adage, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. Practice.”