I sometimes recall the early days of my career (just out of college, working on my portfolio) where I could barely get myself to work sometimes. It was part laziness...I would rather spend the evening watching TV or sleeping when I was in my twenties. And it was partly procrastination because I really didn't know what I was doing, attached with a fear of failure. Failure in terms of planning to do a thing, make a thing, and then just making a mess of the thing so bad you hope no one ever sees evidence of the thing. Making pictures is hard and takes a lot of practice to consistently produce good work on a regular basis. (Which is why generative artificial intelligence art drives artists NUTS. It devalues all the practice and dedication we've put into our craft).
I had an experience in college where I managed to pull off a strong book cover for my beginner status, which was proclaimed by my professor, publicly, out loud and in front of my peers at a critique. I was equally proud and a little embarrassed, and soon after that, afraid that I would never manage it again. And for the rest of that year, I fulfilled my own prophesy because I psyched myself into believing it couldn't happen again. Every assignment thereafter that year was a struggle. In reality, the other projects probably weren't that bad, but just a normal stage in learning where you get lucky sometimes as a beginner and everything works out right, but you truly don't have all the skills yet. And I'm not saying I'm the queen of everything now by any means, but still to this day, with almost every painting, I take a deep breath and hope this isn't the time I am not able to make it work. And I've had other artists agree with me that they often feel that same way. I guess staring at a mess of a creation when you are learning is a little traumatic in some ways.
But anyway, that made me think today while I worked on a piece that I can't really show you yet, about an assignment we had in college to illustrate a crowd of some sort. On the surface level it seemed so simple! And yet it was NOT! Hence the reason for the project. Because you learn quite a lot when you try to create a scene like a crowd. How do you make it make sense? How to make it natural? How to create it out of nothing, rather than just copy a photograph of a crowd? (The latter which was not allowed). I don't even remember what I ended up doing, but I remember it being difficult and not great. And now it's my absolute favorite thing to do. Although I don't always have the time for it.
Here's a cropped detail of the piece in progress that reminded me of our "crowd" assignment. It's for the upcoming group show called "Imagine" at Nanny Goat Gallery in Petaluma, CA opening in February. I hope to finish it up this weekend. And of course, I can't wait to share the whole piece. 😊
Cropped detail of “Good News in the Meadow,” oil on gessoboard panel by Gina Matarazzo