Whats not on the syllabus

To set one's self high standards is a good thing. An artist of any kind,  needs to develop a critical eye for their own work.  To be able to appraise, judge and select the successful from the less so. Not an easy task, when criticism of your work, by others or by yourself can so easily be felt personally.  It is essential to develop a degree of objectivity. The work and the artist are not the same creature, even though it may feel as though they were.

I try not to allow anyone to see my work when it is newly completed.  I need at least a day or two to get through the 'honeymoon' period.  The time when I am enchanted, delighted and involved. I keep my new baby close and observe it  from every angle.  Slowly, I begin to notice its faults. I may attempt to correct them or brood over  how fundamental and intractable they are.  Within hours the love affair is over and the art work I was so proud of becomes something so dreadful I cannot bear to look at it.

This is the point at which much of my work has come to grief. Paintings cut into pieces with shiny, sharp scissors, beadwork dismantled and scattered.  Drawings, torn and shredded.  One of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn during my two years at college and university is to resist the temptation to destroy. Tutors insist on seeing all your work, the good and the bad.  Judging a project as a whole, from beginning to end, not just the final destination. 

So I began to hide my work from myself. To put it out of sight and easy reach once the voice of my inner critic began to make itself heard.  The result was detachment.  An ability to see things in a more objective way.  Suddenly I could say 'that works' or 'that doesn't' in a way far less clouded by emotion than previously.  Strangely, some of what I consider my more successful pieces seemed no longer to have anything to do with me.  It is difficult to imagine that I  made or painted them. They have become something separate, self-contained.

During the last semester I made my most important discovery so far. Not everything has to work. Just because 4, 8, or even 9 out of 10 pieces are failures does not mean that I am not an artist, or that I never can be.  It is the one successful work that matters, even if it is only one in a hundred. There is no success without failure. 

The painting pictured above is one that once would have met its fate at the hands of a pair of scissors, and deservedly so as it is not very good!  However, instead of being destroyed it will be filed with my notebooks and sketches. Looked at for what it can teach me about what doesn't work. Enjoyed for the beauty of that deep, dark red and perhaps one day become a step along the way to something that will work.

Comments

[cat]

FINALLY! Someone else who understands the need for distance and objectivity when assessing their own work! Was starting to feel like I was alone on this.

[Francesca Gray]

Its not easy, is it? I found that I was actually too hard on myself, never allowing any feeling of success to last or to acknowledge what I had done well. Its as detrimental to ones creativity to be constantly negatively judgemental as it is to be blindly convinced of ones own genius, lol. Thanks for commenting Cat, its good to know we are not alone!

[Daphne Wayne-Bough]

Interesting, we have many things in common ... half Irish too (on both sides - work that one out), refusal to grow old gracefully (perhaps that goes with being half Irish), and the brush with the black dog from early days (definitely Irish). I've resolved all my issues by blaming it all on being half Irish, now I can accept it all no problem.

I don't paint, but I never throw any bits of writing away, they might be rubbish but I often fish them out months later and use them in a new piece. Perhaps perfectionism is an Irish trait too?

[Francesca Gray]

Daphne - I'm guessing that a 1/4 inherited from each parent makes up the half? The thing about Irish blood is its persistance! My Grandmother used to blame all my faults on a Celtic legacy.

I wish that I had learned the 'don't throw it away' rule earlier. Journals, short stories, poems and even a couple of almost novels have been banished over the years.

[Red Queen]

I enjoyed this and it is so true. I am a quilter and when I am up close to my work I see all the flaws but if I pin it to my design wall and take 6 steps back even I can't see many of the mistakes. We have a saying about a man on a horse riding by wouldn't see it so it can't be wrong.

[Francesca Gray]

LOL! Red Queen! I like that saying, one to remember.

[Francesca Gray]

LOL! Red Queen! I like that saying, one to remember.