Remember and Inspire.

I usually try hard to share uplifting stuff, and I trust that you appreciate that I mostly hold back on sharing when things aren’t going well. But I think it’s important that I let you see into my real-world studio, even when it isn’t all happy memories and birdsong.

But today was just not pretty. I started out off-balance and I’m still stuck here hours later. Yes, I know in my heart that it’ll be ok. This art thing is not the only thing that matters. The sun will rise tomorrow and birds will still sing. Yes, I know I just gave advice to others in the last blog post about de-stressing. I really meant that when I wrote it, and it usually works. I know there are far worse things than hitting a creative brick wall. I know that.

Then what is eating me, you ask? This painting. That’s what. It’s horrid! I’ve worked and worked on it off and on for weeks in between other more successful paintings. I keep thinking I have a duty to get it right when deep down, I know the truth. I even find myself avoiding the studio because it will be right there to mock me when I enter. I’ve had some really encouraging successes lately. I have to force myself to remember that.

So why am I so bummed out that THIS one turned out to be such a stinker?

I really really wanted this idea to work. It looked much different when I envisioned it. But almost from the outset, it was off. Each time I tried to adjust it, I just made it worse. And now it’s over-worked, flat, and clunky. Nothing is right about it, except the birds taking off from the shed roof, and you can’t even see those from any more than a couple of feet away. All of the elements which were meant to give balance are distracting instead. I dunno. I still think the idea itself has merit. Maybe this would have been better as a much larger painting, a square format instead of panoramic, simplified and with less drama in the sky.

But art is messy. And sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t clean it up.

It took a lot of nerve, and advice from people I respect to even let anyone see it. All I want to do is sand it down and start over, never let anyone know about the one that failed. Post only happy endings. But that isn’t real. The reality is that artists produce a lot of work that the world never sees. It’s our dirty little secret. You might be surprised how many terrible paintings lie hidden beneath better ones, unless you are yourself an artist, in which case you already know.

So here’s what I will do. I will throw off the self-imposed guilt trip. I will stop trying to fix this monstrosity and forget about it for a while. Then, after I paint something better, I’m going to get technologically brave and do a podcast or a workshop. I can use this bad painting to demonstrate how sometimes, giving up on something is ok, that moving on is sometimes actually the wisest course of action!

There! NOW I feel better. Think I’ll grab a cup of coffee, head for the porch, and listen to the birds sing for a while.

What about you? Have you ever hit a brick wall in your own work? How did you get past it?