Create-Destroy-Recreate: Anthony Pearson
- Gina Greenlee, Author
- May 3
- 2 min read
If your work goes up in flames, don’t fetishize the ashes, is the headline for a section of the New York Times Magazine’s April 2024 “Beginners” issue. The subtitle for the issue is: “From debuts to do-overs, what it means to start an artistic life – at any age.”
A featured quote from painter, photographer and sculptor, Anthony Pearson resonated with my focus on the dynamic of create-destroy-recreate.
“In 2013 there was an electrical fire at the studio I’d just moved into, and the building burned to the ground. I lost cartons of negatives and proof sheets that were over six feet tall, as well as photographs – stuff I’d made five, seven, 10, 15 years prior. Of course, it was traumatic and terrifying, but it was also freeing.
“Eventually I realized it was an opportunity for me to draw a line ad stop making a certain kind of work. As artists, we think, ‘I got known for this type of thing,’ or ‘This is what everybody seems to like of mine.’ A part of me felt, ‘I have to rebuild this person,’ and then I thought, ‘Well, I don’t; and started something else.’ It was actually one of the most fruitful periods of my creative life.”
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“…What all artists know is that the process of beginning, fraught as it is with stops and pauses, never really ends.”
Beginners, The New York Times Magazine
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Create-Destroy-Recreate: The Remix
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“Then, somebody suggested the only way that you’re going to be able to get rid of the mold is burn them. And so, we burnt them. And that’s why they’re black. and I love them the way they are.”
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“It’s just like life, where something beautiful gets taken apart and then it has to get put back together. And you might not have all the pieces to put it back together the same way it was initially. But in the creative process, I can take something apart and reimagine it in a different way.”
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“For 30 days I painted, wrote, and sculpted. Disassembled those projects then reassembled each to create something new. Even as I engaged create-destroy-recreate, I didn’t understand that the art practice gifted to me was a powerful metaphor for living. ‘
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“In life, as in a Zen koan, we create by shifting our perspective to the point at which interruptions are the answer.”
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Honor what has been, release what is no longer needed, and make room for what is emerging.
