The Dented Can: Creating Imperfectly In An Imperfect World Part III

 

Introduction to Part III

Welcome back! We’re at the conclusion of this three-part series on imperfection as it relates to arting, particularly equine realism. We’ve come a long way on this journey, having discussed several weighty issues that pertain to the difficulties of making art when perfection is the goal. Because — blorg! What an impossible task! To attempt to make a “perfect” realistic equine piece is literally to forge off into a futile, doomed mission with no end! No wonder why perfectionists tend to spin their wheels so much. Their goal post keeps moving!

It’s said that Leonardo da Vinci quipped, ”Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Whether or not you agree with that, the point is, there comes a time when you just have to quit with this endless pursuit of perfection and call “done” only because you — if you’ve been paying attention — come to realize you simply cannot produce perfection. It’s just not ever in the cards, no matter how hard you try and redo and redo and redo. Maybe you’re exasperated, maybe you’re fried, maybe you’re bored, maybe you’re confused, maybe you just want to be done. Whatever the reason, it’s your inner voice telling you to stop chasing that windmill. Your horse is exhausted. Because perfection, in all its forms, is absolutely impossible in an imperfect world, in an imperfect universe, in an imperfect reality. So stop. But how do we process this release of perfectionism when our pieces have to be as perfect as possible? Well, we’ve explored that theme throughout this series, so let’s bookend it now with two important components to this journey…so let’s just gun it and go!…

The Imperfect Dream

Another thing I’ve learned in over thirty years in this biz is this: Most collectors don’t necessarily want realistic equines — they want dream equines, and that’s a very different order to fill. So despite all their espousing of realism this and realism that, of accuracy here and accuracy there, when push comes to shove, this community tends to choose what tugs at the heartstrings and the imagination over what tugs at the technicalities. They want to be enchanted more than anything else and reminded why they love horses in the first place. It's understandable. But I see it all the time, even today when ABC judging is the dominant evaluation platform. But here’s the thing: If you can ping both, that’s where the real magic happens! So aim for that! The gist of it is though: Don’t just focus on technical accuracies and workmanship — those are simply the incidental baselines to our art form, the “givens” that have to be there anyway. What you should also be focused on in equal measure are three additional things: 

• Narrative: What story are you telling in your piece? What sort of context, backstory, theme, or overarching tone or theme does this piece embody?
• Heart-grabbing: Does my piece speak to the heart and soul of the viewer in equal measure? It should remind people of why they love equines in the first place.
• Novelty: What new territory am I exploring with this piece whether a new way to express technicalities, your knowledge base, skillset, narrative, composition, concept, technique, media or what not? Seek to push yourself in some new direction with each piece.

So all this is to say that what the community says it wants isn’t necessarily what it wants. At its core, despite all the brouhaha and espoused demands, it really just wants to be inspired, to be reminded of why equines are our focus, our muse, and our passion. So if your work can do that  along with technical accuracy, you’ve got it on lock.

Recommended reading:

Top Hat n’ Tails: Steppin’ Out With Style

The Imperfect Plan

To get all these sensibilities in tow and moving forwards, we often do better with a plan, a map to get us to our goals. The thing is though, each artist must plot their own course according to their individual needs, so every map is different. But there are certain myths when it comes to map-making because what we definitely don’t need are:

• A perfect map or plan
• A perfect, flawless portfolio
• A perfect, amazing CV
• A five-year strategy or business plan
• Being “ready” to start

Nope. You see, all that will build and morph along the way on its own plus if we stick too hard to a fixed route on our map, we can find ourselves in the weeds pretty quickly all the same. In fact, our first maps can be wrong, be off-course, or become outdated to what we’re evolving into. And stay open to the random opportunity that may seem out of left field, but segues with our Voice nicely. So the trick here is to keep our map buildable and adaptable to our ongoing evolution while not betraying our Voice. So on that note, here’s what we do actually need for your map:

• A direction or goal: What do you want to accomplish in your art career? Be honest. And your direction can be a bit murky as it will probably morph along the way.
• Your Voice: Your driving sensibilities that dictate which routes you take, even the nature of your destination.
• Adaptability: Your resilience and ability to bounce around lets you reroute, get into new lanes, backtrack, and find new on-ramps and off-ramps as you need them.
• Keep showing up: Participate in the community, with your peers and colleagues and partners, make good use of social media, and engage your art in the happenings going on. But even more, keep showing up for your work — keep making it no matter what. Indeed, your love, perseverance, patience, determination, innovations, growth, curiosity, and courage will come into play in a big way as you keep on, failing forwards and growing.
• Identification of guideposts: Who are your mentors, teachers, peers, colleagues, and partners who not only correct your map, but point you in the right direction, even new directions.
• Doing the work: Hard work, sacrifice, diligence, and follow through to completion are all necessary to walk the Path. Not “someday,” not when you feel “ready,” not when things are “perfect,” not when you have more money, time, or confidence, or skill — now. The truth is there is no perfect time to start, so just start now! Confusion you can fix with information, fear you can fix with courage, roadblocks you can shove aside with help, but procrastination is 100% on you and will 100% burn your map to ashes. You’ve got to do the work.
• Willingness: How willing are you to learn, to make the sacrifices, to put in the hard work, to question and challenge (especially yourself), and above all, to fail and still keep going? Your powerful will is the fuel you’ll need to get where you want to go.
• Curiosity: How much are you jazzed by learning new things? How pro-active are you in self-education and expanding your knowledge base and skillset? How prone are you to challenge your own conventions, biases, blindspots, and sensibilities? Are you eager to follow your curiosity or do you tend to choose safe comfort zones and convention, particularly your own?
• Humility: Are you able to be a newb again…and again and again and again as needed? Are you okay with failing spectacularly in full public view? Can you process embarrassment, shame, mistakes, bad art days, and other artistic oopsies effectively, especially in public view? And even more, can you always give credit where credit is due? Are you apt to openly recognize the contributions of others to your map? Remember the adage, “Be nice to everyone on the way up, because you’ll meet them again on the way down.”

That’s what will serve you best on your Way, that’s what will get you to your destination on the most flexible, responsive, and effective Path. Because once you’ve given yourself permission to learn, to make mistakes, to be a newb, to question, to feel awkward and uncomfortable, and to always try again, you’ve laid down a solid foundation for growth, exploration, and building an exciting studio. Because all those other things like contracts, licensing, CVs, portfolios, agents, gallery relationships and all the rest will pop up on their own along the way, but if you don’t have those foundation gumptions from the beginning, it’s just a self-sabotaging endeavor. In a nutshell then, the question really isn’t “Am I ready?,” it’s “Am I willing?” So, are you? 

The Imperfect Art

All said and done, we should realize that realism is an intrinsically imperfect art form. No matter how hard we try, no matter how skilled we are, no matter how big our knowledge base, no matter how long we’ve been doing this, no matter how keen our Sight, no matter how many classes we take, we’ll always — always — fall short of our mark. Why? Well, it’s pretty simple: Only Nature can create a perfect horse, only DNA can achieve perfection. Yet even then, no horse is perfect! Like thumb through an auction magazine to see the plethora of individuality in the equine form, just like us — so who’s to say which one is perfect? And hooooo boy, ask a group of people what makes a perfect horse and watch the flamewar start! Yet to add more fuel to the fire, even Nature is flawed through all its variations, genetic errors, mutations, and all the rest — and much of it still works all the same, just like our art! So one can say that our actual attainable goal is to achieve as much realism as we can muster to trick the eye just enough into believing it’s more than just an HSO (horse-shaped object), in the full knowing that means different things to different people. Like someone may look at a painted sculpture and be fooled in an instant while another may look at it and immediately see all the illusion-popping errors. The more esoteric those errors get though, the less likely they’re going to be identified. But there’s always a tell, that’s the point. So the goal isn’t to achieve perfection, but enough accuracy to do the job, and that’s significantly more attainable…thank goodness!

Then we have the difficulty with our methods and media — our workmanship. Heck, simply achieving a smooth basecoat or white pattern is enough to drive us up a tree! But here’s the thing: Our workmanship has to be even more on point only because more people are simply going to recognize a brushstrok-y white blanket or a missed bit of flashing than they are a missing tuberosity on the knee or a laterally bent lumbar section. It’s just a lot more obvious to more people. And here perhaps perfection is most insidious only because a perfect prep job is possible — you simply have to remove all the flashing and casting relics, right? That’s doable, given enough patience, gumption, and technique. Likewise, a smooth basecoat is attainable with an airbrush while smooth white patterns are doable with the right brushwork and paint consistency, making them also fully within our capabilities. No wonder why so many truly struggle with prepwork and painting! It’s a very different bar to clear when perfection is no longer intrinsically unattainable! Argh! So here perhaps we really need to apply our wabi-sabi sensibilities to keep ourselves not only sane, but happy in our arting because there comes a point of diminishing returns. You see, when our brain starts associating arting with frustration, disillusion, and other bad vibes, we won’t be arting for much longer. Double argh! Yet here’s the real crux of the matter — we need to stop bullying ourselves and each other with perfection. Give people room to enjoy making their art! If that means they missed a brushstroke but still had a blast painting that pattern, then let it be. If they missed a bit of sanding scratches, but they love their piece, then let it be. If they got a bit of dog hair in their hoof paint, but the hoof still looks good, then let it be. Sure this equation is very different with working artists who do have to deliver as close to perfect as possible, but the casual artist? Ease up on them! Let them have their joy in their more casual way.

Nevertheless, it’s important to finish what we start for follow through. Now it’s okay to have several in-progress projects going, but we really do need to finish them at some point, especially if we’re a working artist. Like it feels good to put that period on the end of that very long sentence for our own sake, for our art’s sake, and to move onto other things with a clean slate. And each piece can only teach us so much and it’s time to finish it up and move onto a new lesson. Yet even so, it’s okay to putter around in our art from time to time, a lot of great art has been created by puttering around. But it does become a problem if that's a pattern of behavior if this is our livelihood. Absolutely, a working artist finishes most of what they start not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard — because they have to. They have to start, they have to save it from the mistakes, and they require that follow through no matter what. But this is the surprising thing: This pressure is actually pretty handy because it forces us to, as Tim Gunn would say, “Make it work.” And sometimes in art, forcing things to save a piece, to finish it — heck, to even start a new piece — can actually lead to discovery, innovation, and the excavation of personal or artistic issues that ultimately improve matters in our long game. 

But boil it all down and this is the imperfect irony about our niche art form: Realism isn’t as objective as we may think it is. It’s certainly more objective than, say, conformation, breed type, and artistic appeal, but in and of itself, technical accuracy has its own degree of subjectivity, especially when it comes to the gestalt response. Sure, someone quite knowledgeable may see the technical errors, but if that piece consistency wins big, sells big, becomes famous…as many technically flawed pieces have…what actually matters most? Oh, the conundrum! So again, just do the best you can on your learning curve, and let the chips fall where they may — and you just keep on, artin’ on. That’s all any of us can do.

Recommended reading:

Finally Finito: When To Call Done

The Unreality of Realism: Walking the Tightrope Between Fact and Fiction Part I - Part V (click "newer post" to go to the next Part)

Keepin’ It Real: Ways To Support Artists Beyond The Dollar

Taking Off The Blindfold

The Enigma Drive

Demonslaying Part I - Part VI (click "newer post" to go to the next Part)

The Breadcrumbs Home

Gathered Wisdom

DABPPRR: Equine Realism Easily Organized

The Master’s Edge: The Importance Of Quality Workmanship

Twenty-Five Tips For Preserving Your Joy In the Studio

Conclusion

Perhaps now it’s clear that creating perfect art in this crazy ol’ imperfect world is a bit of a self-imposed delusion, isn’t it? It's kinda self-sabotaging in a way. In a sense, it's a bit more about turning into Don Quixote with his windmills than gaining superpowers of impeccable talent, skill, and vision. In fact, if we dig deeper, we find that perfectionism isn’t just a desire to do well — we all wish to do that, even those who have put perfection in its place. Nope. Rather, it’s in equal measure a fear of failing. A fear of shame, humiliation, a fear of not being enough. In this strange way then, perfectionism is a kind of love-hate dichotomy: Love for our art, arting, and our subject, but hate of shame, embarrassment, frustration, and failure. How curious! How imperfect a relationship!

But with some reality injected into this delusion, some reason infused into this preposterous proposition, and some self-love smashed into the self-loathing perfectionism can provoke, we can’t only learn to accept our imperfect art, we can actually come to embrace it for the marvel it is. What’s more, we can reconcile and make peace with this imperfect world that just never seems to stop testing our patience, resilience, and sense of humor.

Because it’s important to make peace with imperfection, to realize that we can go about our arting business joyfully, skillfully, and purposely even when that impossible carrot of perfection dangles in front of us, always pulling us forward in its maddening way. That we can find satisfaction even when we’re destined to always pull up short. Yes, it’s true. Because, yes, you can find that renewed kind of relationship with your art, too. Because there are three truths we mustn’t ignore. First, art should first be fun! It’s gotta be a true pleasure, if you’re doing it right. Second, art should be a sanctuary for you, a rebalancing that brings you inner peace and solace. And third, arting is good for you! It’s good for your mind, your heart, your soul, your health, your guts, and your sensibilities. If we don’t make peace with imperfection though, chances are we may never even start arting in the first place, denying ourselves of those beneficial truths…and for little good reason. 

So assuage those fears imperfection fires up with a goodly dose of love, curiosity, courage, and gumption to just start creating some art! It can be something incredibly small or simple, too, nothing fancy or involved. Cut out a paper horse and glue on some yarn and glitter! Done! Sew up a stuffed horse with button eyes! Done! Prep a $10 Breyer and paint it chestnut! Done! Start with baby steps! But just start. This imperfect world desperately needs your imperfect art, and together we can actually find a new kind of perfection in the way only love, beauty, and inspiration can conjure up together! So make a friend of imperfection and you’ll find not only a gentle, nonjudgmental companion, but one who accepts you for exactly who you are and your art for exactly what it is, gladly and openly.

"You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul.”

- George Bernard Shaw

The Dented Can: Creating Imperfectly In An Imperfect World Part III

The Dented Can: Creating Imperfectly In An Imperfect World Part II

Introduction to Part II

Welcome back to this three-part exploration of imperfection in art, specifically equine realism. We’ve covered a lot of ground with Part I with the Imperfect Goal and the Imperfect Journey, so now let’s continue with two imperfect features that entail quite a lot to chew on. So let’s just dive in!…

The Imperfect Notion

Many people, including many artists, seem to think that creativity is kinda like a train that goes from Point A to Point B on a neat and tidy rail. That you start your work and steadily work through it to completion. And, yes, it can be like that, and what a blessing when it is! But the fact of the matter is creativity is more like a demolition derby with ideas, challenges, mistakes, and plot twists all crashing together as your smash and bang your way to completion. It’s usually a messy business. Indeed, some pieces can be taxing, even exhausting because of it. Then there are those who have honed their discipline to turn that chaos into more like an off-road rally. In this case, it’s Toad’s Wild Ride as we careen forwards, almost out of control but still plowing steadily onwards to completion. That’s the way I work, right on the edge of utter mayhem but with just enough structure to make progress. But above all, we don’t want our creativity turning into a major freeway during peak rush hour. Ugh…no! So the goal is to just keep moving, in any direction, as long as it’s forwards. And any step forwards, no matter how minuscule, is still forward motion.

Many people also think, including many artists, that “good” art is “perfect” art, that “quality” and “worth” and “perfection” are synonymous. But you and I both know that’s not true. First off, perfection is simply unattainable in this imperfect world as we’ve already discussed. Secondly though, “perfection,” like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What is perfect to one person will be full of flaws to another. I see it all the time in our technical art form, for example. Some true masterpieces meet with crickets out there while really problematic pieces meet with wild kudos. So many out there adamantly profess to want realism, or technical perfection, but they don’t actually know what that is! It’s so strange that in an activity so dependent on realism that so few seem to actually recognize it when it’s right in front of their face! But that’s “perfection” for ya. So who’s to say? Sure, we can have educated opinions, but they have their own biases, conventions, and blindspots that skew their assessment all the same. Third, Nature isn’t perfect so we shouldn’t be perfect either. In other words, it’s only through imperfection that we can attain true realism! Oh, crazy irony! And Nature is full of variation and oddities, things not presented on anatomy charts or discussed in text. Now this isn’t to say to make deliberate mistakes — nope. It’s to say we need to know the rules first before we can bend them like Nature does. But the point is, “perfect” needs to be kept in perspective so it doesn’t drive us bananas or feed our fear (perfectionism) to potentially paralyze us. And this matters — it matters a lot — because it can spell the difference between your joy or drudgery. Indeed, our modern society pummels us with the expectation of perfection on a daily basis, but the unavoidable fact is that arting just doesn’t function this way. Instead, art is based on imperfection to be beautiful — yes! Your Voice, novelty, happy accidents, individuality, style, artistic appeal — all of it — are dependent on imperfection to even exist, things that imbue your art with more authenticity, beauty, uniqueness, humanity, you-ness, and even more realism. “Learning to let your art not be perfect may be exactly what you need in your quest of finding your own voice,” says Scott Christian Sava, and he’s bang-on correct. Learn to let go, but to let go in the right way, yes? That’s to say we do have technical biological rules to follow, but in addition to that there’s a lot of artistic fudge-factor possible. Therein lies the secret place where the magic can truly happen, of that marvelous union between technical accuracy, artistic expression, and meaningful narrative that’s characteristic of all our very best works.

But all that said, it does get more complicated. Of course it does. Like in Western thought, our art comes from us as individuals, we are the originators of our visions and art works, innovations, or inventions. But this concept wasn’t always the case. In ancient Greek thought, it was a divine spirit called a genius, a muse which serendipitously showed up, touching us with inspiration and enlightenment, carrying us to the completion. And because this was an unpredictable event, so was the creation of truly great work an unpredictable event — something every artist knows all too well. Now this did also mean that if our work was super successful out there, we couldn’t take full credit, could we? Nope. Our capricious genius delivered for us, through us. But on the other hand, if we met with abject failure, we weren’t really to blame, were we? No. Our muse just didn’t show up and do its job! In many ways then, this is a healthier way to process rousing success or abject failure, two things each of us will experience in our arting career, and in very public ways. Because the hard truth is that every artist — every artist — will have bad art days. Days where nothing works right or pieces that just end up far below our potential for whatever reason — it happens. It’s a mystery, but we will all create problematic work because that’s simply part of the art gig. But without a healthy processing strategy, this can drive us into a creative inertia if we aren’t very careful. We’ve got to find a way to keep our motivations fired up despite the failures and successes. Successes? Yep. You see, success can be as traumatic as failure. Failure, because, well…failure. But also success because now everyone is going to expect you to top yourself next time, and that can be utterly paralyzing if you don’t have processing tactics. Then you have imposter syndrome to contend with and the “you’re not good enough” goblin, both of which can poison the process further. And nevermind the hellbent desire for perfection throwing even more demoralization into the fray. In all this and more, failure can crush us with confusion, regret, humiliation, shame, disappointment, disillusionment, and lost face while success can usher in a lot — a lot — of pressure and stress steeped in fear and intimidation. It’s literally a no-win situation! So learning a kind of detachment with both our successes and our failures may be a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s actually a beneficial attitude to adopt. That kind of distance can act as a buffer zone where you give yourself the license to be a fallible human being who tried the best you could with what you had at that moment on your learning curve.

Speaking of detachment, we’ve got to learn not to care about what other people think of our work, good or bad. Why? Because we’ll free ourselves of a great deal of ponderous weight, making our creativity far more buoyant. “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free,” said Georgia O’Keeffe, right on point. Artist, that’s the headspace you have to find within yourself, down to your core, to find true empowerment. That well of not-caring inside of you is your fountainhead of your most authentic and innovative creativity, despite all the sentiments out there. “The audience comes last,” says Rick Rubin, and he nailed it. You create your art to please yourself first. That’s your prime directive not only to yourself and to the Universe, but to your art. Putting the audience last makes your art more you, more genuine, more unique, and more meaningful because it makes your Voice more potent and emboldened, a massive plus when arting. And trust me — your collectors will appreciate that authenticity all the more because it spices up their options! Just never forget that your art has chosen you, and only you, to manifest through — don’t dishonor it. Don’t contaminate it with the wants, influences, demands, expectations, wishes, criticisms, conventions, biases, and pressures of other people. You’re the creator of your art and they aren’t, therefore they should have no place at your table. Never forget that. The only person who belongs on that throne with that crown is you! So follow your creative gut — your Voice — with gusto. Your head and heart can be mistaken or panic or conflict to lead you astray, but your gut will always take you in the right direction, where you were meant to artistically go.

Consider this, too: “Comparison is the death of joy,” said Mark Twain, and he was absolutely spot on. Evaluating your worth, skill, and talent as a function of how it compares to that of “better” artists isn’t only debilitating and demoralizing, it’s an apples and oranges comparison. You see, you have your own magic, unique in all of space and time, and your art only has you to manifest through. You are its only conduit, it’s sole pathway in all existence. Think about that for a moment. That’s pretty profound, isn’t it? You are important, your art is important, your Voice is important — all that has all the value it will ever need! As Martha Graham put it:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. 

Always remember that your magic is as special, unique, and as unsurpassed as that of anyone else. So you don’t need to compare yourself to other artists, do you? You don’t need their magic — no, not at all. You have your own! Lean into it! So rather than denying it, polluting it, or trying to turn it into something it isn’t, embrace it! And never forget that it’s uniquely and wholly yours, and yours alone — so use it! You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about! Would you be ashamed of devouring a delicious ice cream cone on a hot day? Well, don’t be ashamed about your art! Indeed, your creativity is as natural to you as breathing. Would you be ashamed to breathe? No? So don’t be about your arting. It’s a part of who you are, what you’re all about — don’t hide it away, denigrate it, or dampen it. Crank it up! Art out loud!

Now one can argue that arting out loud takes confidence, and well, yeah…it kinda does. But confidence not in the way you might think. Not the confidence you have when you’ve been arting for a long time, the confidence that comes with experience. No. It takes a truer, more meaningful confidence. You see, real confidence, true confidence isn’t so much about knowing you’ll succeed, but knowing you can snap back into shape after a failure. Real confidence has more to do with resilience, adaptability, and embracing uncertainty — even potential failure — because you know you can bounce back regardless, all the wiser. "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts," said Winston Churchill. And it’s true. And courage in the truest sense of the word: The root word of courage is “cor,” the Latin word for “heart,” so in the early form of “courage” then, the word meant to “speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” And here’s the thing — fear has no power in the courageous heart that realizes failure isn’t final. You can fix things as you go. You can do it over again. You can morph and bend and adapt to make it work in new ways and directions. You can learn what to avoid on another piece. All of this smooshes together then into a roused powerhouse, allowing you to tackle any piece even in the face of your greatest fears and intimidations. This is the kind of confidence an artist needs most and which isn’t so hard to come by either. Why? Because it’s less about believing in your skill, ability, aptitude, or talent and more about recognizing your own power to bounce back. It has very little to do with how “good” your art actually is and everything to do with how irrepressible you are. Embrace that truth about yourself and you so got this!

Yet too many souls live in fear of their arting. And fear takes many forms: “I’m not enough,”perfectionism, imposter syndrome, procrastination, spinning wheels, intimidation, comparisons, doom scrolling, insecurity, creative timidity, self-deprecation, seeking external validation, bravado, obsession with “likes,” a block, and our comfort zones, habits, and conventions, among many others. Fear knows exactly what buttons to push, doesn’t it? And golly, is it a born button pusher! But this is why those artists who have persevered haven’t actually conquered their fear. In fact, that’s not really possible. Why? Because fear is a very human reaction to a very daunting proposition — and the prospect of making something real that’s exists only in our mind’s eye is a rather daunting proposition, isn’t it? As Brené Brown observes, “To create is to make something that has never existed before. There’s nothing more vulnerable than that.” Indeed. And fear just happens, there’s no stopping it. Instead then, triumphant artists have learned to coexist with their fear and still function despite it, in lieu of it, beside it and — yes — even with it. Absolutely, we can learn to harness our fear to even fuel our efforts, spinning it into an exciting challenge and a problem to solve rather than an insurmountable wall that stops us. So just understand this: Fear and art is a very natural and normal association that’s only really mediated by curiosity, hope, love, courage, confidence, and a whole lotta moxie. Light those up within you then and you’ll launch yourself into the right trajectory!

Complicating matters even more, many folks believe that inspiration is like a light switch, it’s either on or it’s off, and that inspiration is enough to get us from Point A to Point Z on our creative safari. Nope. Inspiration exists on a spectrum, on the one end being like a raging torrent that whisks us away uncontrollably with fireworks and heavy artillery firing off everywhere while on the other end, being like an ethereal wisp of smoke that must be painstakingly cajoled into being or allowed its own time to percolate into something more tangible. And then everything in between. It can even tickle your toes for decades before welling up into action! Whatever it is, each artist feels it in their own way, sometimes in different ways at different times, making it as mysterious and mercurial as a waking dream. But inspiration needs help — it cannot carry our motivations on its own. All it can do is provide the ignition, the flame, but it’s our job to keep that stoked and blazing with our love, patience, perseverance, stubbornness, curiosity, hard work, sacrifice, gumption, courage, and a whole lotta diligent problem-solving and slogging through the tedium. Think of your inspiration more as a quest then. Not necessarily the goal per se — because our visions are impossibly perfect in our mind’s eye — but the beacon that guides us on a creative journey chockfull of surprise detours, obstacles, challenges, enlightenments, and curiosities. And it’s okay to end up in a totally different destination! Sometimes that happens with art, the piece simply changed its mind and decided to take another route. No problemo, my friend. It’s all a normal aspect of arting. It’s a mystery.

However, if you sit around, waiting for “inspiration to strike,” you’ll be waiting around — and not creating your art — for a very, very long time. Because that’s not how inspiration works most of the time. Sure, we can get a random inspirational lightning strike and take off with it like a crazed ferret. It happens. And it’s an amazing feeling! But even so, the vast majority of the time, inspiration isn’t like this, like a light switch, like an on-off button. It’s not really like a dry well that all of a sudden fills with water. It’s more like the water itself and you’re the well. Like Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” You see, you’re a dry well when you aren’t creating yet inspiration usually needs something to work with to get going — it needs its pump primed. So if you just start arting — doing anything creative, in any direction — all of a sudden, that inspiration will crank up like magic! And honestly, get your creativity really going and watch your inspiration turn into a self-propagating, self-sustaining machine, spewing out inspirations like an uncontrolled firehose. Then it becomes a game of simply keeping up! You see, inspiration feeds on itself and that catalyst is often creativity, not the other way around. So just get to work — do anything creative. Beading, journaling, pottery, sketching, flatwork, photography, collage, mosaic, knitting, even cooking, sewing, scrapbooking, quilting, and gardening…whatever. Heck, even deeply listening to music can be a highly effective means to get the inspiration fired up. Take some classes or workshops. Go to a paint n’ sip. Dabble. Experiment. FAFO with your media. Try new media or methods. Get in the weeds and find your way out. But the counter-intuitive gist of all this is: The only cure for sluggish even absent inspiration is to just make art. That’s actually the answer to every single creative problem — make more art. Just make more art. “Good” art, “bad” art, it doesn’t matter. Just bang it out. “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing,” said Georgia O’Keeffe, and that about sums it up. Definitely don’t worry about how “good” it is — the important part is to just do it. “Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art,” astutely advised Andy Warhol.

What’s the point of all this? Well, that the creative state of mind and therefore the creative act is a messy one. It’s not a one-note Perfect Moment, it’s not a straight line. Instead, it’s loaded with a host of “imperfections” that flavor it, and that’s okay! In fact, that’s kinda its hallmark, isn’t it? Creativity is just a chaotic business, so make peace with that and learn to work within its ever-morphing bubble. “In the middle of all the mess, there’s a quiet kind of magic waiting for you. Embrace the chaos, because that’s where your most authentic and beautiful creations come to life,” said Arastasia. Truth!

Recommended watching:

Your Elusive Creative Genius, Elizabeth Gilbert

Success, Failure, and the Drive to Keep Creating, Elizabeth Gilbert

The Power of Vulnerability, Brené Brown

Recommended reading:

Moving Forwards With Fear

Failure Fatigue: Coping With The Cycle Of Faceplants In Art

Busted

Riding The Rollercoaster

Now About Those Anatomy Charts, Part I and Part II

Paralyzed By Perfection: Breaking Free Of the Cycle

The Imperfect World

Life as an artist isn’t a bowl of cherries whatsoever. It’s hard. Really, hard. Really really really hard. You have to be truly impassioned with what you do, utterly in love with your work, to simply continue doing it much of the time. Like aside from all the technical, logistical, financial, legal, philosophical, and familial challenges it ushers in, there’s the very real mental health challenges. Mental health? Yes. You see, it’s not your art that will take its toll on you, it’s the world at large that will. It will take its pound of flesh again and again and again. Unfortunately, there are just those out there who’ll quite obviously delight in tormenting you and will shred your work because they can or because they’re simply too callously thoughtless to behave otherwise. It’s like having an ongoing, unstoppable trolling comments section in your life you can’t turn off — and our niche community is particularly vocal in this regard. As such, you’re going to be constantly bombarded with thrown knives aimed directly at you that you can neither dodge nor block. You simply have to take the hits graciously — and do it all over again and again with the creation of every new piece. That’s the Faustian bargain, the trade-off for this blessed life, the price you pay living the artistic life. In this imperfect world, there has to be some sour to balance out the sweet, right? In an imperfect world, discordant notes will be loud and repeating, too. Try to reconcile with that.

Likewise, there’s no rhyme or reason to what the gestalt will go bonko over. I’ve seen more outstanding masterpieces meet with crickets, even criticism, with really problematic work gaining wild kudos and glowing reviews than I can count. I’ve seen so much technical accuracy lose in the ring to technical errors, realistic expression lose to conventional comfort zones, and glowing workmanship on a “plain” color lose to flawed “flash.” I mean, the groupthink claims to want realism, but some just don't know what that actually is, or when it’s right in front of them, they think it’s wrong. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this biz, it’s that some tastes are strongly conventional and can rely heavily on the lowest common denominator comfort zone. Anything that actually presents actual realism yet lies outside those comfort zones will have a more difficult time of it. It’s so strange! One wonders if some collectors have actually ever seen a living horse at all. So what’s the point here? Just do the best you can with where you are on your learning curve, and let the chips fall where they may. Create your art your way for you, for your own reasons and motivations, according to your original visions and inspirations, and any successes are merely an incidental cherry on top. Because the truth is the likelihood of you finding applause out there can be surprisingly slim. Indeed, "do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't," advised Eleanor Roosevelt, and well, any comments section proves her absolutely right. So don’t chase kudos! Don’t seek external validation! Don’t give one wit to “likes”! Quit with the comparisons! If you build your “home” on top of all of that, you’re doomed to crash in a flimsy house of cards.

And then there is always That Guy Who Just Wants To Help, i.e. the “friendly unsolicited critique.” Ugh. These people, lemme tell ya. The tone deafness, the presumption, the denial of your Truth, and all wrapped up in a friendly, “helping” bow. Yikes. Sure many claim they have good intentions — but do they really? I would argue that, no, they usually don’t. Like they want to make your vision like their vision — that’s wrong. They want to impose on your creative space — that’s wrong. They want to “save” you from a big mistake without understanding the backstory of your Truth or your references — that’s wrong. They want to make a “correction” without understanding their own blindspots, biases, and conventions — that’s wrong. They want to hear their own voice sound more knowledgeable — that’s wrong. Just pick it all apart, and their claim of good intentions simply falls apart. The fact of the matter is this: Unless something is outright dangerous or really jerky, there’s absolutely no circumstance that justifies an unsolicited critique. Not one. But oh—how so many love to chime in all the same! So learn to ignore it or process it best you can with plenty of coping mechanisms. Turn off comments sections or flat out ignore comments in your posts. Just remember that your work only has one relationship — with you and only you. Keep that a closed circuit when it comes to public sentiments. It’ll keep your work true to your Voice, authentic, unique, and you sane and balanced and still motivated to art.

Likewise, we’re going to abut up against problematic comments, even rudeness and obnoxiousness, when we display our work in public, and especially when we put it up for sale. For example, people will often ask, “How long did it take you to do that?” A simple enough question at first, but pick it apart and it reveals itself as something rather offensive, doesn’t it? Think about it. What are they really trying to find out? Yep. They’re adding up the price tag as compared to the hours you inputted to determine if your paycheck — if your living wage — is appropriate. Eeesh. So never answer this question. Simply distract from it with something like, “It takes as long as it takes,” then change the subject. Similarly, some people will comment that our work is just “too expensive,” or in other words, too expensive for their pocketbook, making the typical mistake of equating their experience as appropriate for everyone else’s experience. Instead, either ignore the comment and change the subject, or counter with something like, “I do offer a payment plan or here are my lower priced items that might interest you.” Along those lines, you’ll probably also encounter the all-too-common comment, “I could do that myself for nothing!” So what I do is counter with, “Well, you should! Make your own sculpture — it’s good for you! Arting is good for you!” And wow—how quickly they limp away. The point is, people will blurt out truly nonsensical blather so you should have an arsenal of coping mechanisms and responses that get the point across while still remaining professional. When you’re prepared and ready for it, you won’t be caught off guard to make a professional blunder. You also won’t be so anxious because you’ll be armed and ready to deploy, a much more empowered position. 

Recommended watching:

Why Your Critics Aren’t The Ones Who Count, Brené Brown

Recommended reading:

The Critic In The Creative Space

Arting In A Bubble: An Empowering Way To Create Art 

A New View: Transforming Intimidation Into Inspiration

Redefining Success: Some Thoughts On True Accomplishment

The Comparison Trap: How To Make It Work For You

Pickled Art

The Artist As Other

Conclusion to Part II

Phew! That was a lot to process, huh? But give it a good think. Because if we want to become creative or remain creative, we’ve got to reconcile with imperfection in some functional way. Because a lot of people don’t, and so a lot of people live their life as a squelched would-be artist and that entails a measure of existential pain. Somewhere deep down, they long for something they’re too afraid to grasp, and all too often it’s that fear of imperfection that’s the root cause. And that's a darned shame because it's avoidable. 

You see, art, creativity, is your birthright. You come from a long line of creatives back to the very beginning. Homo sapien just has this ingrained penchant for making things needlessly beautiful. Like a bow more ornate than it needed to be, or a cup more beautiful than it needed to be, or an axe more decorated than it needed to be, and on and on. We are a creator species — it’s in our blood, our very DNA. And it’s in you, too. So don’t deny it out of fear! Embrace it in love! Arting is so good for you in so many ways! Even more, imperfection isn’t to be feared or appalled by, it shouldn’t be a seat of anxiety or hesitation — it should be your starting point! So start as miraculously imperfect as you can then just tweak things along the way until you get them “just so” to your liking. That’s how art works! It asks you to take that leap of faith and it will catch you — but only if you take that leap! So jump!

“One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist…Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.” 

- Stephen Hawking

The Dented Can: Creating Imperfectly In An Imperfect World Part II