Short Thoughts

I was once told that ‘even though you are a mature person, this does not mean that you’ll be a mature artist’. At the time, I wanted to reject the statement as it was a challenge to my ego! Since then, I have of course found it to be true. Being a mature artist would prove difficult for me to talk about, as I would not class myself as such. I am certainly more of a mature artist that I was, but this is also down to me consistently applying myself to the task, in the same way I would to refining my maturity as a person. The qualities each of us value most, those that we feel represent a mature person and mature artist, will of course vary. I have, in part gone some way to discussing what I think I need to balance in order to be an authentic artist (motivation, purpose and meaning) in a previous post. I’d like to attempt to do the same for ‘mature person’ and ‘mature artist’. Based on this, it seems there is the need to introduce the ‘authentic person’ as well. Are authentic and mature synonymous? When a person/artist matures do they become authentic? Or could the process be described as ‘authentically maturing’? Just to clarify, these are of course not separate identities within an individual, but are indicators of the amount of time spent on an activity, subject, practice or pursuit.