Every painting doesn’t have to be a “masterpiece”

Every painting doesn’t have to be a “masterpiece”. You might not always love every piece of art that you make, and that’s okay. You might have a week where you love everything or a month where you hate it all. That’s okay too. There is no obligation to always like or always hate or sometimes like or sometimes hate your own art. It just is. The liking or disliking doesn’t even come into play into what is important.

There are days when I don’t think that I can paint. There are days when I can’t wait to paint. And there are days when I feel like I need to paint. The funny thing is, it’s often the days that I don’t think that I can paint, that I end up liking my paintings best. And sometimes when I have great hopes for a painting, it doesn’t come out like I want it to. We all have days where we don’t want to do something or think we can’t. Maybe especially art. I think it’s those days that are most important to paint or create something. It doesn't matter what art comes out of it, just that you expressed it. Also, you might be surprised to find out the result of your art on a day that you are raw and true. Then again, you might not like it at all. And that’s okay too. what’s important is just that you create. This goes back to the book The Art Spirit that I mentioned in my last post: “The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture…the object…is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence.” (Henri, 159).

You don’t need your unexpressed feelings pushed down deep inside of you and smothered. Let them out. Let them out onto your paper, into your clay, in your sketch. It doesn’t have to be a “masterpiece”. It just needs to exist. You just need to create. Express yourself. Also you don’t have to know what you’re expressing when you’re creating, you can just create. Fling that paint, slap it with tools that you don’t usually use, just do something to let yourself feel what you’re trying to avoid and to let it out. I bet you’ll feel free, like you’ve freed yourself, which is my whole point in painting and hence the name of my website.

So, on days when I throw away painting after painting directly from my table into the trash because I hate them, that’s okay. It’s okay because they weren’t the point anyways. Recently I did just this. I threw away paintings of varying completion because I hated them all. Frustrated, I tried again. That next one I was about to throw away too but instead I picked up a fluffy new, vintage floofy camel hair brush (that I’ve since learned is most likely squirrel hair) that I’d just gotten at a thrift store in a pack for $2 and started splashing and flinging paint on it willy nilly, mostly annoyed. I didn’t care how it turned out anymore and I just kept watching the water and the paint and the brush and just kept on splashing and sloshing water and paint. Then I stopped, seemingly having gotten over my frustration, and looked down at my paper. It was the best painting that I’d done all day. It was crazy. I felt a bit crazy. I was almost trying to ruin the painting, I was being so sloshy. I had been about to throw it away and then I let go instead. I expressed myself and let go of having to have it look a certain way, and it turned out that I loved it. This seemed to be a change that day for me. Feeling like I could just paint and not worry, I picked up the floofy brush again and a green watercolor crayon that my 9-year-old daughter got in a mixed bag of random art supplies at the same thrift store and painted. At the last few brush flings of paint, I actually laughed out loud in joy. I enjoyed the process so much and I loved the bright blue and green colors that I chose. That’s what matters, not the resulting painting.

So like all of life, let go of your worry and just paint or sculpt or sketch or whatever it is that lets you express what you’re feeling. That’s all that matters. Now go and do it. I’d love to see what you create.

Works Cited

Henri, Robert, and Margery Ryerson. The Art Spirit. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1939.

There is an artist within all of us

There is an artist within all of us. I recently read this sentiment in both The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity and The Art Spirit. Robert Henri says, “I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will all come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is an artist within every man..” (225). One of Julia Cameron’s basic principles states, “There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life - including ourselves” (3). At first I thought, how can this be? It was such a novel idea to me (Now I’m laughing - they weren’t novels, they were both nonfiction! Anyhoo.). But I am just starting to really get it. And especially for those out there who think, ‘ha! not me’, please keep reading.

There really is an artist within us all. We all just have to look within. We need to forget about supposed tos, doing what we think we ought to and making other people happy. We just need to be open. We just need to be. We need to take that first scary step and try something, anything, to set ourselves free. Free from any expectations and labels. Think back to when you were a kid. Do you remember doing something again and again or all the time? That is likely your art. Your true self before you worried who you were supposed to be. If you’re doing that now, then I am so happy for you! You have done something hard to do, remained true to yourself. If you aren’t doing this thing that brought you immense, unadulterated joy when you were young, then why not?

All that is really needed is being willing to express ourselves while totally being absorbed in it so that we can let the light in, so that we lose track of time, so that we reach what is known as flow. When you reach this state, you aren’t concerned with how people see you anymore, of how you even see yourself, you actually lose that sight and you are just in this state where you are immersed and totally present with what you’re doing. You’re living. It’s not the product of painting or writing or any art that is art, it is actually just the state that you are in when you are being creative that is art. The painting or the finished play or song that you make when you are in the state of art is just a product.

The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture - however unreasonable this may sound. The picture, if a picture results, is a by-product and may be useful, valuable, interesting as a sign of what has past. The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments of activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a buy-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state (Henri, 159).

You owe it to yourself, to the child within you who knew they were artistic and to the adult today that may have forgotten to try. Take a chance on art and do something to attain the state of being that is so divine. Let’s shake off those bonds. Take that first step. Maybe you have before but you need to take that first step again. Trust yourself. Set yourself free.

Hello, friend. I see you. Now see yourself for who you really are. For the artist within you.

Works Cited

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992.

Henri, Robert, and Margery Ryerson. The Art Spirit. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1939.