Confidence, Art and Life

I have a weird attitude. I may be giving bad advice sometimes by coming from a completely different perspective. Or I may be giving good advice where it's needed most. I could be doing both in the same paragraph, depending on who's reading it. So take this as an essay both in general about art and specifically on pastels, because pastel has become my heart-medium.

Pastels are instant gratification. I want to paint it, bang, I do. There it is. Big and bold and visible across the room. I paint small for a pastelist except on very good days but pastels make it possible for me to paint at all most times, because of that speed and power.

This essay is in answer to a forum post where a new friend said something that made me think. I had mentioned I didn't have the space to paint large complex still lifes, so I've been doing small simple studies. I'm drifting into the 6" square format of the Daily Painters and thoroughly enjoying it. This friend compared that to my dipping my toe in the pool, then wrapping the towel around my hips and walking away calling that my daily swim.

Well yeah, actually that is my daily swim. The fact that I was able to do it at all makes it a good day. On a bad day my daily swim would be a two inch long gesture sketch of my cat while he sleeps, something I could probably do without even looking at him because I've done it hundreds of times. He said it was a mystery because other painters with even less space managed to do larger, complex still lifes.

Well, the mystery is solved. I did answer and tell him it wasn't just space but disability. Because he's right. If I was abled, I wouldn't mind getting up and sweeping ALL the food stuff off the dresser, set up a still life, sketch and photo it, live out of boxes for eating for a while till the painting's done (or just work from the photo) and then put all the food back. About like the kind of vigorous housemate who lets the apartment turn into a wreck and then every month or two blitz cleans it over one weekend - and saves time for video gaming overall because that blitz was relatively easy for him.

Heck, I might still live in a place too small for complex still life and just go out to sit on the sidewalk and paint a window display in a shop instead, because that caught my eye. Even make more than one bus trip to get back to the antique shop to do that. There's more than one way to scan a cat.

I adapted to physical disabilities before I knew I had them. This has shaped my attitudes about everything in life and I was constructively lazy for most of it so far. Everything I do to make myself comfortable has an immediate self rewarding effect that I'll actually do more. Someone abled and overworked might find comfort irresistible and prefer to sleep or watch TV or socialize when they could be painting and would enjoy painting if they gave themselves a bit of a push to do it. But someone who's always in pain and usually too tired to live is bored stiff with just watching movies or laying in bed and seizes on any moment when activity's possible as a break in the misery. This is the truth of my life and why I always dive for my Comfort Zone.

It's in my Comfort Zone that I'm able to do anything at all. Add extra challenges onto the logistics of trying to live in my body and chances are I'll wind up using up what little body energy I have in creating the setup or getting out the materials.

So maybe Comfort Zone is a problem like weight loss. Many people are a little over and could stand to lose a few pounds, but you really do not want to suggest that to an anorexic. They might push it to the point of death if you do. It's never a temptation to just do nothing, it's always an unpleasant frustration. I cannot keep the pace of the abled and I find my limits in unexpected and unhappy ways if I don't follow my intuition on what I can do right now, this day, this hour, this weather and what I ate and who said what to me online earlier.

Stress comes into it too. Stress isn't good for people in general, but most people need a certain amount of it to be happy, a comfortable pace. Some people actually thrive on a moderately high level of stress and excitement, depends on personality and metabolism and culture.

Fibromyalgia means that emotional stress, even something like reading the wrong news story at the wrong time when it gives me a shock, will knock me into total exhaustion and physical agony. Crippling pain washes over me. This will also blur my vision, wreck my memory to the point I sound like an Alzheimers patient, leave me forgetting my phone number or not finding something right in front of me. In that state I don't paint well even if I push myself hard and try to paint.

There were some kinds of work I could do in that state but all were left-brained rote activities. The entire 1980s were my "pain robot" years.

That said, I think there's something strange that goes on between attitude and confidence.

I'm continually surprised at how the level of confidence painters have is almost disconnected from their skills. It's not like the best painters beat themselves up more than beginners. It's more that some people are really happy with their own art and others not.

I am usually happy with my art even when it's flawed, because there'll be something about it that I like. I may want to redo it later but probably not by reworking on the same piece. I'll probably apply the critique later to some completely different subject, but if I'm not happy with something I am as likely to be wrong as when I'm thrilled with it.

But I have also got other challenges in life a lot heavier than whether a painting works or whether it's finite perfection. I strive to improve overall so that my worst come out pretty well and someone will like them. I reached a point of liking my own drawings very early in childhood after a long life study of one pet and from there just assumed I'd keep getting better at difficult subjects, but I approach them slowly. I also don't even do them until I've got all the tools I need to do it right sometimes.

But, back to the physical. When I paint, it makes me happy. Especially when I go right into my Comfort Zone and choose a subject with bright colors like a macaw or hummingbird or flower or fruit, or a cat, any cat, a landscape without any other people in it or signs of human habitation where I know I'm not going to get hassled by anyone and can amble through at my own pace without running into those abled hikers with their huge backpacks warbling about "It's only another mile or so" to the water. Better not be or I'm dead. I like to see the water right in the scene.

I like those moments with wildlife where sitting still long enough lets them relax and understand I'm not hunting them, so they wander out and show themselves close. Wild cats especially but most wildlife too. I didn't get to do it often but I have had some moments to remember and love documentaries.

What happened is that because I couldn't run and play as a little boy, I got very good at reading, writing and drawing, the things that were still fun when you sit still for a long time. I did and do lots of little drawings that can be finished before I'm too tired to do it well. I learn a lot and over the past few years have learned so much more than I ever expected, WC is tremendously stimulating.

I get decisive when I paint. A mark is there when I've done it. Removing marks in any medium takes a lot more time and effort than just taking it for what it is and moving on, dealing with it by changing what I do next. That's just a physical fact. Anything that makes it slower and harder to finish a painting means I'm less likely to even manage to do that painting, so my reworking paintings usually isn't cost effective.

I have seen great painters brag about throwing away 19 out of 20 paintings they do. This makes me cringe. I can't count the number of times I hated something I finished, but other people loved it, and then years later I found out why and that what I thought was my worst was actually my best because I'd leaped beyond myself and intuitively practiced a principle I didn't consciously understand at the time.

The thought of wasting that much effort is horrifying too, but on body energy I'm on a budget something like a single parent of five kids working a part time Wal-Mart job. All physical activity takes five times the body energy given my skeleton, that's a limit I had from birth. I took much longer learning to walk than other children and was extremely clumsy being cross eyed on top of it, the eye operation helped but didn't change all of it.

So if I had to cross the room to get more paper, I did so five times. If I have to get out a different box of pastels, I did it five times. If I set up the easel or stand at it, I did it for five times as long and my scoliosis kicks in. Between pain and spasms, I can get too excited and push my back to where I'm stuck with days of bed rest. I have to stop at the first twinge, so slight it doesn't even register as pain, or I will pay bitterly later on.

But maybe for someone passionate and physically vigorous, brushing off a huge piece of Kitty Wallis paper 20 times till they're emotionally satisfied isn't a big deal.

I am currently trying to settle in and rearrange my life to be able to paint more, paint better, paint larger someday. That's a slow process and a good deal of it is a matter of literally rearranging furniture with the help of home care workers. I manage to paint when I can't even take a bath without help, because having help in the bath means I have some energy left to paint the next day. Literally the actions involved in scrubbing my body are sit-ups my back won't tolerate. I can manage two to wash my hair and if it ever gets so bad I can't keep that up, I'll get them shaving my head because I dislike other people washing my hair.

I live on disability for a reason. I'm hoping to get back to painting for a living, or more realistically supplementing old age Social Security by painting on the side. If I wasn't disabled at all, I would have made a good living as a painter probably from the time I was 20 and started getting cash money for little pen and ink dragon drawings. I'd have had the energy to do enough of them and most of all, paint them bigger and colorful and get to enough conventions, do the full sheet starscape and nebula beyond craggy moonscape astronomicals too, live in the sci-fi fandom but drift toward fine art on the side.

It's also screamingly funny to me to look at different art markets like the museums-gallery fine art circuit, the sci-fi fantasy fandom, the graphic novels and murals style of modern art, and see that each one has its own expectations about subject and ideas and "originality" which usually means "Do some old familiar favorite really well and be good enough at this style we can tell it's you without the signature. Share what the dragon or water lilies or mountain goat means to you."

Some people here like tough critique and most of all prefer to see flaws pointed out, because they are tired of compliments and lean toward perfectionist, get disgusted if they feel something's wrong and can't put their finger on why. Or don't trust it if it looks good.

Others blossom under the support. WC excels at both, the critique guidelines here are just broad enough to make it very comfortable for both the tough-critique "exciting challenge" crowd or those that thrive on support and encouragement. I got a lot of encouragement as a kid because sitting still made me get way ahead of any healthy child. I had the time and boredom to do it.

So what works for me may not work for you. Or it may work well for you. Please don't throw away your paintings! Just sell them to other people who like them, they may be right, they sure are for themselves and it'll make them happy. Let it go and use the money to get more paper. Remember that your worst is still way beyond what a lot of people can do at all and they'll still love it as much - just as they do still love the one they bought a decade ago that's not as good as what you do now.

There are always better painters. It's open ended. If you're up in that range you're already so specialized in your own style that the others that great are doing things you'd never think of doing, and so there's something cool to learn, including what you'll invent tomorrow. Or what happens when some chemist creates a new pigment or manufacturer an entirely new medium. There is more to learn about painting even in one medium than any one artist could learn in a human lifetime or even a dozen lifetimes because all of us are also always inventing. Art is not a zero sum game.

I think some ideas, like ranking it best and worst, are bad when applied to it because it gets so subjective and holistic. Your personal taste is going to apply to all of it and so does that of your buyer or gift recipient. Your skill at communicating with those art viewers is only going to increase, though sadly physical illness, pain and injury can reduce it. But that can be worked around. Skill can compensate for lost capacities.

I might get more detailed again if I got prescription glasses. Or I might not because I'm coming to enjoy working loose and concise. It's all fun.

What's the point of this essay? You have to judge for yourself. It's real obvious to me now that yeah, I don't do things the way other people do. What's easy for you is nearly impossible for me, but some things that would be hard for you are stone easy for me. I've had one major still life painting planned for almost a decade now and may well paint it someday - little by little by little and without actually owning any of the objects. It involves an expensive wooden sideboard, a lot of lovely crystal and glass, a mirror and a beautiful white cat sound asleep in the middle of it. Which of these things is going to destroy all the others? Guess!

If I had that stuff I sure wouldn't pose the cat in the middle of it but I may get good enough at planning paintings and rendering those objects to put it together entirely by design, capture my Siamese in the right pose, work out the reflected colors on the white fur and remember the exact hue all of it gets in the mirror because the slightly greenish glass cools everything. It'd be a fun painting. It won't be watercolor even if it'd work in watercolor because Getting Older is not going to make me more capable of stretching a full sheet of watercolor paper. Its most likely going to be pastel on sanded paper. It won't be realism. It will be impressionism.

It's simultaneously going to wow with its beauty and shock you with the thought of all that broken glass a moment later, make you want to reach in and gently catch the pitcher, pick up the kitty fast, if I do it right you will have about a 50-50 chance of saving the situation provided you know cats and that cat trusts you like your cat does. I could remove Ari from a pile of breakables on a good day and I'd move the at-risk pitcher before removing him - in that direction in case he decides it's Rowdy Cat Play Time.

But that's the fun of it. I see that paintin gin my mind and slides of it in watercolor, in oils, in oil pastels, oil sticks, oils by painting knife, pastel realism, pastel impressionism, all different ways, exist where you can't see them. And someday I'll have the skills to do it. Then sketch. Then get to work on it about once or twice a year till it's finally done. Not something I can live on, but it will get done or I'll die first. And that's how my life is shaped.

Know yourself. Know what you do and what you don't and why. Stop beating yourself up. Neither you nor your art has to be perfect. Perfection only exists in finite unliving things and art that's too perfect isn't, because good art has and shows the imperfections in life. Compensate for your barriers and weaknesses, play to your strengths and do what's right for you, because that's also where your style comes from. Past a moderate level of skill, others who know you can tell it's yours before you sign it.

Passion and Fear

Have you ever felt afraid to start on a blank surface, hesitated after getting a good sketch down on it or paused from panic halfway through a good painting? You're not alone. Fear of painting or drawing, whether it's fear of starting, fear of continuing or fear of showing it to anyone is common. I'll scare you one step farther. It has some basis in reality and isn't just an irrational phobia.

It's socially acceptable in the Western world and especially in America to mock artists, either in general or specifically.

We're held to an unreasonable standard by the public. A common point of view is All or Nothing, the attitude of your typical alcoholic gets picked up by people who had no connection with substance abuse. "No one can make a living at art." Superstar or Nothing - you're either Picasso up in the million bucks for a sketch price range or your work is worthless and you should spend your time doing something productive like watching television.

Yes, I'll make fun of the mockers.

If you listen to everything they say, they'll come out saying that when you add up all of what they said. The fact is, they won't pick on you for spending all evening playing video games, tweeting or watching television. A lot of "Normal People" have no creative outlet at all. A sizable number of them are lashing out because a long time ago, they had dreams of becoming artists or musicians or writers and got shut down by exactly that social pressure.

This is environmental. It's a work hazard. It's not just you. Don't put yourself down as a wimp because your feelings get hurt when people attack you socially and disrespect your work. You're taking up an avocation or profession that gets flamed everywhere by anyone not in it.

If that isn't enough social risk, within it a tendency toward snobbery, elitism and trendiness rejects good work on arbitrary grounds of style, subject and conformity to a different set of expectations. Copy the style of a 20th century avant garde master with even the slightest variation, like using a different photo reference, and wow, you're So Original. Even though what you did is entirely derivative.

I've seen that end of it more than once in circles where the money gets very big.

So what does that make you, friend?

It makes you brave. You're standing up to some real outside pressures that wouldn't be there if you studied chartered accountancy or devoted all that energy and passion to calisthenics. Some activities are socially acceptable. Others are not. Art and the arts hold so many intrinsic rewards that if you let go of other people's opinions and paint for the people who like your paintings, you can build a glorious life. One that's an exciting adventure!

I chose my whale painting to illustrate this one because it's out in the middle of the ocean, no shore in sight, seeing one of the largest creatures on earth dance with those waves and start to dive into its natural environment. Live large! Be you! Paint with passion!

Today's essay was prompted by a forum discussion where a friend posted this link: Fear Art Quotations. Right near the top, one of them jumped out at me as a theme that demands to be written.

Fear melts when you take action toward a goal you really want. - Robert G. Allen.

Why is that one so important, when the page is full of beautiful, heartening quotes? Because it's not just morale. It's literally true.

Fear and excitement are exactly the same physical state. Both of them are an adrenaline surge in your body. Adrenaline readies your body for Flight or Fight - but modern life in any industrialized country has its greatest risks in ways where throwing a punch or running away are bad ideas for how to deal with it. You can't beat up the landlord if you're about to get evicted. Running away when the boss chews you out will get you fired. Running away if someone makes fun of you at a party is what the bully wants! You'd get laughed at again for running away.

To face social challenges, you need a clear head and a strong heart. You need to be articulate, expressive, most of all confident enough not to lose your head and start shouting or acting aggressive. Assertiveness wins hands down in social conflicts, especially in the long term. It's not just more ethical, it's more effective in a functional sense. It will draw more positive people into your life and more opportunities open up.

So what can you do with all that anxiety? Anxiety specifically is a crippling physical and emotional pain that comes from being cornered socially where neither fight nor flight will do you any good at all. You become inarticulate because back in the Pleistocene, you would not have stood a chance trying to talk down that Smilodon fatalis who wanted to eat you. You had to throw rocks at it, run away or both.

Our bodies are still living on an African savannah, chasing some animals from dinner and running away from bigger predators. But we painted in those days. Some of those paintings are so breathtaking that to this day, without any cultural context, we stop and stare in wonder and awe, we buy prints of them to hang in our living rooms. Or copy them as murals, as one Arkansas artist I visited did. Her living room was gorgeous with Lascaux horses galloping everywhere on earth toned walls with clear areas where her horse paintings hung.

Copy a cave painting on your wall to remind you who you are.

What you do is human, it goes back much farther and deeper than professions like programming or accountancy or retail sales. It's something innate to you. You have the capacity for it, most of all if you love it.

The best way to blow off that anxiety is to put a great big canvas on your easel. Pick up a big brush. Paint what you love. Don't even do it to sell, though it may come out wonderful and command a high price later. Do it for your heart.

Dance around painting and stepping back to look at it. View it from different angles. Mix paint. Splash it on. Work hard, physically, make it something wonderful that grows with every stroke. Fall in love with it again.

When you read that adrenaline as excitement, you have released boundless energy to do something about it. If you do dry mediums, get an 18" x 24" pad of newsprint or cheap recycled paper and do charcoal gesture renderings. Swing your arm from the shoulder. Move around. Put some music on and paint or draw to the rhythm of the music.

Work up a good sweat and then look at what you accomplished. It's probably better than you'd have done if you just curled up in a chair scared to do anything and wibbled in a little sketchbook.

I have physical disabilities especially for standing and walking that make it impractical for me to dance with my art. But there are still physical activities I accomplish to turn anxiety into excitement.

Yesterday I faced an Art Jury for the first time in my life.

I went down to the San Francisco Arts Commission once-a-month Street Artists Program screening. You may recall from my first post that I used to be a street artist. I know the business. I did well at it until my health crashed partly due to some very bad economic decisions like moving too far away from my setup areas and dragging too much heavy stuff in a cart to improve my display.

I might never have been homeless if I'd gotten medical insurance and phoned up the Scooter Store back in those days. I'm glad I did though, because now I'll be doing it in San Francisco where it's not seasonal. I can do it year round with good sales in all but the Holiday Season. Guess when I'm starting up? Now. Yep. Swinging into the Holiday Season. Whatever I do in December and November is going to be the low end of the year's results from Street Artist work.

What I did to fight my fears was paint and sketch. I cut mats for all of my paintings. I cut back boards for all of my paintings. I sorted through all of my stuff to find the postcard size Top Loaders so I could display my example pen and watercolor postcard painting of Golden Gate Bridge. I forced myself to leave some works unfinished so that I'd have "Six unfinished examples." I read all the rules over and over, to make sure that I got everything they wanted to see into the bag when I left.

I even sorted what I was doing so that my tools, materials and paintings all fit in one rather light weight messerger bag in an organized way. At the last minute, this last week, I replaced my absent 48 color Conte set with a 24 color Conte set just so that I'd have my favorite hard pastels in hand to do an example in front of them.

When I went in, I was almost an hour early because I allowed for Paratransit to run late taking other people to their destinations. So I got to see other Street Artists get screened before it was my turn. They included jewelry makers, a musician selling CDs, crafters doing fabric art and ceramics as well as other visual artists doing wall paintings.

I saw a good third of them get disqualified and told to change something in their wares or have some of their works thrown out because they didn't fit the rules for the Street Artist Program. Some of them were rejected completely, others just got only some of their works qualified. The musician was also a producer and discovered that he could sell only the CDs that had his vocal or instrumental performances on them, not the ones his friends did that he was promoting. That's how the program works.

It's strict because it gives preference to artists who sell their own works. Period. That's the point of it - to give jobs to San Francisco artists and crafters. That protects me from someone who buys art wholesale at a pittance from other painters and has it shipped to San Francisco to sell. I agree with those rules.

I was also dead scared that the Screening Committee would throw out my paintings for lack of quality. Tell me to go back to art school and try again when I had salable works. Everything I did was original and none of it was even collaborative, other than my using photo references with the permission of the photographer. About half of my paintings were from WetCanvas Reference Image Library, where member artists share photo references from around the world.

When I got my table, I got up and ran around the table laying it out. I moved paintings, set three of them vertical against the wall and spread the rest out in a good dynamic arrangement on the table where together they formed a good composition. I spread out my prints in an appealing display with each of three prints laid out in a flattened stack so that at a glance, the jury could see those were the prints. I have high quality photo prints.

They had to pick up the prints and compare them to my original ACEOs to see that yes, those were prints but original artwork in the same style was sitting out next to the prints. One of the Committee members asked about my prints.

"Do you know that you have to label these prints as prints, to the buyer? What kind of prints they are..."

"Yes. Look at the back. I read the rules and made little inserts with what kind of print it is, my name and contact information."

She flipped it over, looked at my insert and laughed with relief. "You read the rules." She turned to the rest of the committee. "He read the rules! One of them read the rules!" They all laughed.

I was in, that fast. They mentioned that it gets windy out on Fisherman's Wharf so I should tie down my art or put it into a prints rack that my buyers can flip through. I certainly will, as soon as I get some sales and go purchase a good lightweight aluminum and canvas prints rack to go with my vertical display. I'll probably invest in some larger photo prints, mat them and put them in the prints rack.

I walked out in a happy daze, floating on the compliments of the screening committee. Every one of them liked my paintings and was impressed with them and with my presentation. I knew I could do this. The last big question is pricing, which I might spend $4 for a scouting trip to find out what others are charging for similar paintings before I price mine. I'd like to make the price dead average for size, style and skill so that price isn't a consideration - not bargain basement so the buyers think my work isn't any good, not overpriced so they say "I can get one this good at that other artist's booth."

I can't count the number of times these past three months when I looked at what I had and how much still needed to be done to get ready for that screening and thought "I'm nuts to do this. I failed at it in New Orleans. Why am I torturing myself with this? I should give up."

I felt that way mostly on sick days when I couldn't get up and do something toward making it happen. My biggest moments of courage were on bad nights when I fought myself not to post online "This is too much for me physically. I'm going to give up and stick to selling art online, I can't do it." Everyone would have accepted this, I do have physical disabilities and they did get the better of me last time I held this career.

Before they did, it was the happiest time in my adult life. Bar none, it was the best job I ever had. I loved it. Unless I went out too sick to sell anything, I had fun doing it. I looked forward to going out, setting up and getting real cash on the spot from buyers.

I got on the horse again. That's the courage part.

So when you feel those fears, do something physical toward making it happen. Sketch big. Paint big. Move around and sort your supplies if you do small format art or ACEOs - there's nothing like putting all your colored pencils, pastels or oil pastels sticks in chromatic order for giving your eyes the visual treat that makes you want to paint again.

Cut mats. Sort your paintings and mount them. Varnish finished paintings. Do the physical work of your art, whatever your medium, because that will burn up the adrenaline in your system and leave you the happy glow of physical achievement.

Or work on preliminary works if you have some reason that moving around isn't practical. Intense mental concentration can do the same thing with an adrenaline burn. On sick days I'll work out things that need to be done sitting down too - like researching those rules and checking my preparation to make sure everything fit the Screening Committee's strict requirements. When I do value thumbnails to prepare for a painting, I'm more confident about how well the painting is going to turn out because I know it'll have a good composition.

Every time I've done that, it's worked and made for a better painting. So mental effort is almost as good as physical for burning up the adrenaline. You will feel better emotionally and physically if you pour the energy of your anxiety into action of any kind toward reaching your goal.

That's just how we humans are built. It's why some people go from couch potato to Mr. Universe or get into a smaller dress size. Why dull calisthenics can give people so much satisfaction that they devote their spare time to working out. Nothing builds confidence like a long string of small daily successes.

Feed yourself those and you have facts to answer the naysayers. Reality is never as bad as the pessimists would have it. Plan for the worst case, the best case and results in between. Almost all the time, reality will hand you results comfortably in between, non-extreme, more or less what you'd reasonably expect.

The best therapist I've ever known, Roland Tolliver, once told me "You're overconfident about 10% of the time. That's a healthy balance. It's what they recommend for a top salesman."

So when you're terrified, make an effort. Do something to make your dreams happen, they're not dreams when you start working on them. They're goals. Little goals add up one by one and accumulate to become big goals. Don't lose sight of having some dreams too - getting into major San Francisco galleries or having a one man show at a good gallery is out in the "Dreams" category because I haven't moved toward it yet. But I made a good start yesterday with the Street Artists Program screening.

Last point. When someone criticizes your work, look at the criticism carefully. Take it apart, judge it critically. Is it useful? Is any of it going to improve your future work if you take it seriously? How much of it is worthless, information-free insults to your style, your subject or your personality?

Accept compliments uncritically. Just thank the complimenter, even if you don't agree. They're entitled to their opinion and may see something in the piece that you don't. I can't count the number of times I smiled and thanked someone who thought a quick sketch was better than my finished paintings only to discover, through classes and mentoring with better artists, that the compliment was true. The sketch was livelier than a stiff, overdetailed painting.

So look for real, useful information in the compliments, especially when they come from better artists whose work you admire. Either is as likely to be true, but paying more attention to compliments will keep you happy and motivated with that 10% overconfidence that can carry the day on charm.

Now that you're done reading, if you feel encouraged and motivated, grab your sketchbook and use that feeling. Seize the moment. Your art will improve every day you do it even when you can't see that!