The theory of 10,000 hours of work as a measure of genius. I do not wish to scare you with the amount of work that is needed to achieve genius, but would like to offer the following theory as a guideline as to how much the “Masters of Art” generally worked before achieving their status. In 2008 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Outliers in which he postulated the theory that geniuses almost always worked harder, and longer at what they did as compared to others. And generally an expert level status was achieved when that artist had worked for 10,000 hours in their discipline “ “The curious thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals” – musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn’t have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ...
From my mind as a black man living in modern American social ills. Gerard Merchant was born in 1959 in Lynchburg, Virginia. My works are primarily in wood sculpture. My sculptures emerge through a process of retakes and variations that mark my creative journey of examining the ambiguity between my vision, and the wood’s already exquisite origination. As I execute unclear and less formal rules and which should always reference the partnership with Nature, we create Art.