Thanks for the kind words Clem. While we don’t work in the same medium our craft is filled with hours of repetitive, not overly creative or enjoyable tasks to get to where we are.
The discipline part… man, you hit the nail on the head. Creating with steel is brutal. We spend hours welding external seems. Hours of small motor skill, exacting, hot, burn causing work. We then spend hours grinding those welds back smooth. If you’ve never run a grinder for 8 hours you can’t fully appreciate just how hard it is. I lay in bed at night some nights and can still feel my hands vibrating. There's nothing enjoyable about it. It’s not creative or artistic. It’s grunt work, but it’s part of the process. The thankless and at times dangerous part. My only trip to the emergency room as an artist was grinder related. The doc had to cauterize the wound twice to get it to stop bleeding. Grinders don’t cut… they just remove material… be it steel or flesh.
Finished pieces are filled with hours of such brutal, unfun, non artistic steps. Thankless, but necessary. My guess is your work has many similar hours of ‘work’ to get to the place where it’s presentable. The audience only sees/hears the end results. They likely at times think you make it look ‘effortless’… if they really knew… or likely in their heart they do know, and it’s why they can’t play. They didn’t have the discipline.
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