why carve? and distinctivnes and things

["StoneSpider" <ukstonespider@zzzzzzzzzzz>]

A while back Tom Blatt (also answering Norm) said, in the nicest possible
way, "just do it"  I confess it made me chuckle - and also made me realise
that I'd been pfaffing about looking at tool catalogues and quarry sources
instead of getting on with hitting the stone I already had.  In a sense I
was afraid to get it wrong - early on I 'lost' a sandstone carving: it split
in half - and I'd spent hours on it!  Hours gang up on you when carving
stone: they tease you and evaporate.  So, now I carve because I love doing
it, and because I enjoy the exploration.  I love to learn, in both the
mechanistic sense (had great fun building confidence with a pitcher this
w/e) and in finding out what I want to make from the stone.  Crossing
threads I have to confess to aiming for something that is aesthetically
pleasing: Bill said he'd be insulted if anyone said his work was beautiful
or pretty - I'd be happy with beautiful but not with pretty: that's my
aesthetic line in the sand :-)

A while ago I went to a day of lectures about, in essence, thinking about
art.  One artist had been asked to give a synopsis of his development as an
artist.  He went through a series of paintings he'd done in 196? - a year of
loads of snow in Southern England - huge black and white streetscapes, views
of motorways from bridges (I am getting to the point: honest!) done
principally in black and white and grey.  He then went to an exhibition and
saw paintings just like his.  He went home and changed his style completely.
Talking to people afterwards something about artists needing to be original,
more than original almost, seemed to be at the root of such a change.  I
brought this up here because I find the more I look at other peoples work
the more I see ideas I've already scribbled down but not yet executed (and
see work by different artists that is strikingly similar one to the other).
What do others feel about  the nuances of originality and distinctiveness? -
not withstanding Clives point that having the whole of art history to refer
to is absolutely awesome.

My turn to apologise for a long e-mail - there's always the delete button
:-)

Cheers

Deb