Tonight I attended "Cocktails & Canvases" with two of my friends at my local Foundation for the Arts. It was great fun, and it totally helped relight that creative spark in me that had been burnt out for far too long. It made me realize something about myself as an artist too though, even after drinking a glass of wine to help loosen myself up, I am still way too much of a perfectionist.
In the same amount of time it took most people to fill their entire canvas, I was still focusing on this one section of the skull I was painting, driving myself crazy cause it just didn't look right to me no matter what I did. I really wish I could just let loose & not worry so much about making the things I paint look absolutely perfect. In the end, nobody but me is going to know exactly how the object looked when I was painting it anyway.
So what's wrong with me? Is it because in all of my years being trained as an artist I was taught to paint what I see, exactly as it is? Is it because most of the people who I've encountered who know nothing about art generally don't like and/or understand abstract art? I don't know. Is it because I always fear the people who do see my artwork will judge it, even if they don't say anything about it to my face? Probably.
The irony of it is, some of my favourite artists worked in abstracts; Jackson Pollock, Lena Krassner, Pablo Picasso, Vincent VanGogh, Wassily Kandinsky, Georgia O'Keefe, Frances Bacon, and Yayoi Kusama to name a few. (OK, more than a few.) Maybe I admire them because they can let loose and paint in a manner where they paint what they feel rather than what they see. Maybe one day I will finally let my hair down & paint simply for the joy it brings me without feeling like my piece is going to be part of some juried exhibition where it's going to be viewed by tons of people & criticized to death.
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