I've heard Wolf Kahn and others talk about the importance of "not caring" when painting, and while that seems to make sense as a goal, I've always felt a little skeptical about how achievable it is in practice. You're putting everything you have into a painting—how can you not care?
Today, I grasped the flip side of that question for the first time: really, how can you care? Because if you care about whether your painting turns out well, you'll undercut yourself altogether. You have to try hard and give it all you have, but up to the very point that you decide to stop working on a painting, you shouldn't be looking at it as a potential success or failure, and you shouldn't want anything at all from it other than the opportunity to get out and paint.
If you're in it for the long haul, caring about the success of each painting is just too exhausting, and it inhibits growth. If you want to improve your skills—to grow, to explore—you have to feel free to do anything, to take any risk.
I'm probably able to see this now because it's harder than ever for me to find time to paint. So when I do get a chance, I have to use strategies that conserve energy, emotional energy above all. And if I use up emotional energy caring about the eventual "product" of my work, it's all too likely that on any given day, painting will seem too hard and too draining to attempt.
The only way to keep going, to keep making paintings and to continue to stay open to accident and the unexpected—which is critical to growth and to having fun—is to paint simply for the sake of it. If only one in a hundred paintings turns out to be something you'd want someone else to see, so be it. You'll still be painting.
Today, I grasped the flip side of that question for the first time: really, how can you care? Because if you care about whether your painting turns out well, you'll undercut yourself altogether. You have to try hard and give it all you have, but up to the very point that you decide to stop working on a painting, you shouldn't be looking at it as a potential success or failure, and you shouldn't want anything at all from it other than the opportunity to get out and paint.
If you're in it for the long haul, caring about the success of each painting is just too exhausting, and it inhibits growth. If you want to improve your skills—to grow, to explore—you have to feel free to do anything, to take any risk.
I'm probably able to see this now because it's harder than ever for me to find time to paint. So when I do get a chance, I have to use strategies that conserve energy, emotional energy above all. And if I use up emotional energy caring about the eventual "product" of my work, it's all too likely that on any given day, painting will seem too hard and too draining to attempt.
The only way to keep going, to keep making paintings and to continue to stay open to accident and the unexpected—which is critical to growth and to having fun—is to paint simply for the sake of it. If only one in a hundred paintings turns out to be something you'd want someone else to see, so be it. You'll still be painting.
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