Blank canvases sit waiting. Potential commission checks drift happily into the daydream of my future and then uncomfortably out again. Today, like many others in the life of self employment in the arts, is free, unencumbered with any other obligations but the chance to make art. The studio is clean, the paints sit ready. Everything in my life at this moment is primed and proper for making good art.
Yet here I sit, unable to start. Afraid of…what? This circumstance is not new to me, nor is it news to any artist that fear is a great motivator of inaction. What is it about the blank and oh so white emptiness of paper, canvas, etc. that cripples even the most steely resolve? In my world of the 2 dimensional arts my ally is the colored mud of paint, usually in watercolor form put down in microscopically thin layers… Is that something to be afraid of? A finished watercolor painting has an accumulation of a nearly immeasurable weight of paint on its’ surface. If you could accumulate all the paint of a typical watercolor painting in a small pile it wouldn’t accumulate enough to butter a piece of toast. Is it enough to ruin a day, or maybe even a week? You betcha! The poor writer, of who I am becoming acquainted through this blogging effort, who relies on the bits and bytes of their word processing software to encode their musings onto a computer hard drive actually accumulates nothing but a few electrons as they type through their day. Those minute electrons are no less capable of driving said writer as insane as the forebear’s quill and inkwell or more recent forebear’s typewriter.
What are we so afraid of?
I’ve heard life described as a spiral among other things, and as the spiral draws out from the center and grows ever larger, the same issues keep intersecting at the same points along the spiral like spokes on an ever increasing wheel. The drawback is that you intersect with an issue over and over again as your life spirals on and you are never truly free of that issue. The benefit happens that, as the spiral grows larger; those issues are intersected less and less frequently as the times between intersections lengthen as years pass. Making art is one of those life processes within which each of us will find our inherent issues of triumph and struggle. The triumphs are surprisingly forgettable as the solitary nature of art limits the joy we might feel without someone to share it with. The struggles? Oh, how isolation magnifies the feelings of insecurity, frustration, uncertainty, fear, anger and on and on. That intersection of difficult on our life-spiral is an intersection we’d much rather skip over if only life would let us! The struggles do fade from memory but they also seem to represent many more spokes on our life spiral and may, in fact represent an unfair amount of spokes!
My intersection and struggle with the blank page stems from an issue that recurs time and again. I struggle to plan things out and to take the painstaking steps of research in the form of sketching or gathering reference material that might alleviate organizing the canvas. I pine to dive into color and paint well before the canvas is even primed. Yet, you skip those first crucial steps and you lengthen your process immeasurably as you will more than likely need to backtrack and reorder things that could have been ordered more appropriately from the start. My desire might be akin to speaking before thinking. How many repairing conversations have I had with my significant other after speaking without thinking? Much more effort need be spent in that dialogue… Painting without planning can be much the same for me.
What creates that aforementioned fear is that planning and organizing things before you start means you need to dig deep into yourself from the very beginning of your art making process and, well, that’s hard! You are much more aware of the limitations of your idea when it much planned and understood from the start and what if that idea then proves unworthy?! The real fear stems from our identifying ourselves with our art and if our art should prove unworthy, then so are we! That fear might be irrational but any task you spend hours and days attending can take on a life of its own that seems in a strange way might just be our own life…
Really, art is just something we do and the best we can do today, tomorrow or next year is just that, the best we can do. It’s not something to be afraid of but something to be celebrated. Who we are is much more than our art and what we should really be afraid of is forgetting this and thinking that artist is who we are.
Comments 4
The last two paragraphs touched me deeply, being exactly what I needed to hear. Amidst having rather good luck on getting into shows, I applied to one that I knew was a long shot at best. Even knowing this, I invested too much into the process. The rejection that came did not surprise me, but I was surprised by the devastation I felt. I questioned the piece, my self, my worth, my purpose as an artist and the relevance of what I was doing. Agreed, one rejection, of one image, from a far off person should not have the power to negate the rest of my life that is going rather ok. But boy it can happen all too easily.
Thanks for the article.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 12:52 am ¶Catherine Evans
What an insightful article! As an artist, it would seem that more than other professions you are putting yourself out there. You open yourself up for praise or criticism. Your work is judged. You have to be pretty thick skinned not to feel the sting once in awhile.
Posted 31 Mar 2009 at 10:13 am ¶It is often possible to notice, when you stand in front of a blank canvas, that your mind is equally empty with respect to the image you intend to represent upon it. The nothingness confronts the emptiness and a void appears as a result. Fear emerges because, in this vacuum, you realize that without the perceptual instrument that your own existence constitutes, that is to say, in the event of your disappearance from the world of the living, the universe will continue manifesting in its entire immensity with the same indifferent inertia that it’s always been expressing toward the things it contains. This is not easy to face with a serene countenance, but the effort must be made, and the sensation must be endured for as long as possible since this is the source of all ideas, notions, concepts and mental objects. It is important to see that, at bottom, this is your point of departure, the ground you stand on, just before you make the first mark on the terrifying whiteness. And your work will gain in power and meaning if instead of moving away from it in terror you are able to steady yourself and keep it present throughout your entire process.
Posted 06 May 2009 at 12:46 am ¶I wonder if that fear comes from being continually asked if one is afraid of being an artist, we internalize this cultural expectations of fear. But the fear is never the less so palpably real…
Posted 26 May 2009 at 8:26 pm ¶Post a Comment