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.