Thursday, January 24, 2019

Feeling a fraud

Feeling a fraud

Who am I trying to kid? Why do I think I can paint? There are so many people out there on YouTube that are obviously better than I am, so why do I bother? Maybe I should just retire, hang it up and watch TV or clean the house? 

That was the way I felt yesterday after a totally frustrating unproductive day in the studio. You may be surprised to hear me talk like this, but I thought you might like to know that I too feel this way sometimes. We don’t usually post these sort of things in our blogs and social media posts. We want to show how awesome our attempts our, why our work is worth looking at.

Ok, don’t start to worry about me. I went to bed, pushed the failed painting out of my head and got a good nights sleep. When I woke I, I just shook my head and said, “Silly girl, get back to work! So you had a bad day, so what, just get back in the studio and work through it!” 

But damn, sometimes I just want it to be easier. I feel like after all the years I have devoted to the craft, it should just roll off the paint brush perfectly, and sometimes it does. But in truth, I have grown the most from the challenging paintings. The ones that push me and refuse to let me become complacent. The ideas that force me to break out of my patterns and take risks.

I know that something new is trying to materialize and if I keep on doubting the process it will remain elusive. Sure I can just give up, retreat to something more familiar, or I can take a minute to regroup here and get back to work.
Early on in the struggle, before it took a nosedive, but I reserve the right to push a painting to the point of ruination!