Yesterday I said I’m not much into making new year resolutions, but a rather long to-do list. While browsing around various artist’s facebook fan pages, blogs, etc. I came across an artist who feels the same way as I do. However, her philosophy toward resolutions is quite different than most people. I wish I had bookmarked her blog post to give her credit, but I didn’t and I can’t remember who she was now. Rats!
This artist said she was making a non-resolution! I thought that was interesting take so I read on. Her non-resolution was to not apologize for her art. She decided that she would not apologize for the time she spends, or the colors she will use, and not for the size or shape of the surface, or the medium, or the style in which she feels like expressing herself in any work.
I get that. How many times do we finish a work, to later say: But it’s too small, it’s too big, it could’ve had more blue here, green there, I should have worked more realistically, or more abstract? And then other people chime in with their ideas, comments, and criticisms about our art.
Someone once told me, “No judgement, no criticism”, about things I did that I thought were stupid. Ok, so I thought this or that about a thing I did or didn’t do. It’s done, it couldn’t be helped, just move on. Seems to be a good idea aimed at our art making. We have an idea and try it out on paper or canvas. We work on it until we think we’re done. Then we step back and take a look. Sometimes we’re pleased and other times we’re disgusted! Well then, do we rip ourselves to shreads or give pats on the back? It shouldn’t matter what the outcome is, but rather we were in the moment creating, working on the process, in the “doing”.
So commend yourself for just showing up and don’t apologize for any of it. I like that idea.
1/7/10 Note: Since writing this post I found the blog post that inspired me:
http://betsylewis.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-not-to-do-in-new-year-for-artists.html
