This isn’t a post about art. But it begins with bad art because that’s what I produced today. To wit:
I labored on it all afternoon. I thought about what I wanted to do for days before that. And it sucks. Don’t tell me otherwise.
I’m posting it because it’s bad. Because all my life I’ve felt that if I do bad work (especially bad artwork), I’m a bad person — a valueless person that others will simply laugh at. And I need to get over that. So posting a crappy piece of art is therapy for me.
But this also isn’t a post about my personal angst. It’s about failing and going on.
J.D. Roth wrote the other day about failing financially and going on. His post was one of the things that got me going on this topic. He said, “Failure is okay.”
And it is. Besides, he gives good advice that goes well beyond his self-chosen beat of personal finance.
Another inspiration was stumbling across the blog of an artist, Christopher Greco, who has set himself the challenge of doing one painting every day and posting every one of them, good or bad, without censoring himself. I don’t think he’s actually managing a painting a day. But pretty close. And his goal is awesome.
When he misses, he doesn’t give up. He just goes on.
Recently, I gave somebody a plaque that said, “If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you.”
But skydiving is one of the few cases where that’s so.
As freedomistas we fail (and have failed and will fail) over and over again. Sometimes we fail because we’re trying to change a system that’s got more inertia than we realize. Other times our failings are more personal: We don’t believe in the welfare state, but times get so hard we accept food stamps; we want to build a country retreat but the spouse is adamantly against it; we try to organize a community effort, only to feel as if we’re herding the proverbial cats.
None of this means that it’s not worth the effort. Or that it’s impossible. It only means we need to re-evaluate, screw our heads back on, and try again in a different way.
And perhaps fail all over again.
I don’t know why it is, but some failures are easy and some are hard, and the difficulty may have nothing to do with the importance of the goal.
I can produce a mediocre piece of writing occasionally and shrug it off. To create one single piece of bad art horrifies me to the point where I wasn’t able to produce any art at all for decades. I was frozen. Locked up. Paralysed. Until I stumbled upon a copy of The Artist’s Way at a garage sale and followed its program.
Even now, though, it isn’t easy, and I’m petrified every time I try something new. Doing the above pastel painting today I was nearly hyperventilating, I was so terrified of screwing up.
I’ve posted it solely to tell myself, “Look, you can do bad work and nobody’s going to hate you for it. Life will go on. You might even try again and get better. It won’t freakin’ kill you!”
It’s so true that we teach what we need to learn. Tonight I almost feel like a hypocrite for talking about failing and going on.
But when it comes to the pursuit of freedom, I think a lot of us need the reminder: You fail; you get back up; you go on.
It’s just what you do. Art is optional. If you truly love and want freedom there’s no other course.
O,M,G, I could write a book about this, never mind I obviously don’t have the discipline to write (LOL)…..
I stare at failure quite often, and I have discovered that there’s always something within failure that we learn from, that sparks an idea or even another way of doing something…..you probably had that while creating your “failed artwork” & probably haven’t noticed it yet….actually, when it comes to creating something there isn’t failure, just maybe substandard results, and that may lie within your eyes and not someone else’s LOL…..but creative people should let it flow rather than put restrictions on what is coming out 😉 or else you will block that gift…..there’s people out there that don’t have the gift at all, and are awestruck at what you may deem a failure – they can’t do it at all, period…..
I won’t even go into the whole “creating is tied to personal being, and therefore it’s result is either elation or deep despair – reason why it’s so fierce of a reaction” spiel and bore everyone…..
I have some epic fails, from the slightest thing all the way to personal freedom….every day…..I joke that I keep going because I’m just ornery that way; I keep going because I’m not there yet and to spoiled to stop trying…..
Rather than call anything a failure so quickly, reconsider it just an unfinished project….until it works the way you envisioned it, or as close as is acceptable…..and nothing ever happens as quickly as we’d like it to, but as long as there’s movement it’s still progress….
Beautifully said, Claire.
Sometimes——as in art (or even careers)——we set too high a goal; we want perfection immediately. Sometimes——as in freedom——it’s not what we’re after, but how to get there that’s the hang-up.
And sometimes it’s the endeavor itself that kills us: we try too hard, we worry too much, that we can’t focus on how to get it right. (I’m doing the same thing now in a course I’m taking. Thanks for reminding me.)
The one thing I like about all your paintings is the personal quality of effort and concern you bring to them. I KNOW that you’ve remained true to your own love of the subject and the medium, and that’s what makes them “priceless.”
Gonna give you at least five gold stars for your braveryness. Thanks for the gift of your Self.
Well said. The arts are so subjective, that no matter how much someone (or a hundred someones) adores your work, another is bound to hate it. I think creative folks are more vulnerable to feelings of failure because of this. Creative folks also set high standards for themselves when their goals are truth and beauty.
Failure and I are well acquainted. The best thing about failure is what you learn from it – about yourself, and about your work. After years of slogging through the corporate world, I started writing full-time (on and off) a few years ago. The experience has given me a thick skin, and the confidence to understand that failure isn’t an end in itself, it’s merely a transition.
The outlines could be sharper, but the colors are good.
I, too, have to fight the tendancy to take failures as an indication of my worth.
For a while I was sure I was a complete failure at self-reliance, that I would be a burden if ever there was an emergency, and that I’d be the first one left behind if there was a bug-out needed. After all, I went from planting 20 fruit trees to being stuck in a wheelchair barely able to even breathe without pain, in just a few weeks. And doctors telling me that since thus-and-such test came back negative, I must be fine, one even called me up at home and berated me for being in pain. Then two friends, who don’t even know each other, gave me the same compliment in the same week. Somehow the subject of emergency preps and bug-out “grab lists” came up, and both of them had my name at the top of their lists of things to grab as they were evacuating. When I asked why, they both said the same thing: “With the stuff you know, I’ll carry you myself if I have to!”
I think that was when i started seeing the chair as a challenge instead of an impossible obstacle. I started designing things that might allow me to get back to my land without having to be carried, things like a dog-powered wheelchair or a whole-house pulley system. My physical failings lost the power to stop me once they were no longer tied to my self-worth.
Granted, I’m still grateful to be out of that stupid chair.
Thank goodness we lacked this kind of critical awareness of our failures and insufficiencies when we were infants and starting to walk and talk. We might have stopped trying right then!
Unfortunately, as adults there are plenty of people (including ourselves) who will compare the quality of our efforts to those of most accomplished and highly trained.
For example, fewer and fewer people entertain themselves, their family and community with their own music and singing because it isn’t as “good” as the commercially produced music that we are constantly exposed to – music that is created and perfected with the help of computers and technicians, music that can’t actually be reproduced (technically unaided) by a human being.
But we aren’t each a “music producing machine” any more than we are an “income producing machine” or “graphic art producing machine”. We are more complicated than that.
Henry Van Dyke said “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best”
Good thing I’m not an art critic since I see nothing wrong with that piece of art- and in my former job I saw art from upscale Manhattan art galleries every single day. I framed stuff Picasso drew that didn’t look as good. We are our own worst critics. Relax.
To quote Mythbusters-“Failure is always an option”-and not always a bad thing. Sometimes, failure leads you off in a better direction by letting you see something you might have not noticed otherwise. To try something completely different. That’s been my experience, anyway.
Few of us have ever had an original thought in our life. Fewer still are creative… but with effort we can learn well, and become persistent, the key to it all. It’s important to recognize who has had those original thoughts and creations. It’s a time saver. In the end all lovers of freedom need to jump off of cliffs from time to time. My personal failures are legion, my successes can be counted on one hand. There’s been a lot of the unexpected. I’m good with all that. It beats the dreaded “neutral”, a state which far too many people seem to live their lives in.
“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
Ray Bradbury
Failure is easy, it’s the bravery to recognize and accept success that is hard. It is doubly hard in a society that often scorns the succesful and seldom sees success as something truly and justly earned.
By the way, the art piece is fine. It might be bad art to you, but to this viewer it is just right. The lack of crisp definitions and myriad of colors and suggested textures allow the viewer to be pulled into the art itself. It’s suggests possibilities and promises and pulls at thoughts and memories long past. It looks like a lot of my dreamscapes, based on reality, but with soft edges, there but not quite there.
You’re right, it’s awful….send it to me and I’ll dispose of it properly!
Ya know, I realize that it isn’t what you wanted to create…..you had something else in mind, but this is what came out.
I also am not an art critic. And it looks fine to me.
I used to work for a custom cabinet shop in another lifetime. We produced a gorgeous cherry wood roll top desk. I had made a small ‘doonch’ in the wood near one of the feet. I tried to iron it out, and gently sand the area around it, but it was still there. Every time I saw that beautiful desk, my eye flew unerringly directly to the flaw that I had made….the person who came to pick it up was so happy with it that he gave us a bonus…..and he never saw the doonch.
maybe you should look at where you were being taken in the wrongness of the painting….maybe there is something that wants to come out even more…….
I have always said that you can’t make a “good” anything without first making some (sometimes several) “bad” ones. Humans learn by trial and error.
From someone who can’t even draw good stick people, I think the picture is fine. Great art? Maybe not, but Matt, another nailed it’s success with
“allow the viewer to be pulled in”. I can feel a glimpse of what the inside is like. If I were to buy the house, I can feel what little changes and additions I’d make to the yard. Just like your writing, it’s not so much about whether someone likes it or not, the success is whether or not it makes us think and feel, drawing us in.
As for failures, I absolutely wouldn’t be who I am without having had them. Another damn chance to grow as someone once labeled it. Those experiences that are, or feel like, failures add perspectives that can be invaluable.
It is far harder to appreciate and forgive ourselves than anyone else. That is one of the greatest roadblocks to peace and satisfaction. Bob Cratchet could leave Scrooge and go home to a loving wife. If we ARE Scrooge to ourselves – even in part, there is no respite. And trying to balance that with striving for excellence has been a large part of my life journey.
I have good days… and a few bad ones. 🙂
Now I know why this blog has the best comment section ever. Because it has the best people ever.
I’m with Kent; I don’t see the problem. But really I’m with Danny—send it this way; I could use the money! You wrote,
“As freedomistas we fail (and have failed and will fail) over and over again.”
Nah. This is just what the fulcrom feels like, as we awaken that the answer never was destroying that which is bad, but building that which is good. I see no failure anywhere around this place and AFAIK you’ve done nothing but succeed, Claire.
Besides, it’s factually impossible to fail as a free person. We’re each free, no matter what. We can only fail by that which matters, which is our own judgement.
There might be a few bad things to stop, but destroying is their game. I say let ’em have it.
I like the comment ubik380 made about infants learning to walk.
It seems somewhere shortly after that stage we develop emotionally (or an ego or whatever) and then have all sorts of fears, self-doubts, and other assorted negative internal mook. Learning new things and stretching outside of our comfort zone tends to become exponentially more difficult as the years go by.
Glad you are hip to “The Artist’s Path”. My copy has been staring at me from the bookshelf for several years now.
Oh, and the painting is cool too.
I want to walk up the path, in the door and have a look around.
I judge art by whether it elicits an emotional response. I find your painting vaguely disconcerting (something about the cruciifix form and the closed, dark door). That makes it good art, in my book.
Hopefully, backhanded compliments are not “telling you otherwise” .
i learned a lesson about herding cats from john greer at the archdruidreport; take a can of tuna and an electric can opener to the place you want the cats to be. open the can with the electric opener; the cats will hear the opener and smell the tuna and will run to where you want them to be.
you just have to look at things in a different way when you think you have failed to get it right the first (or nth) time.
clarence
Okay, I’ll bite! What’s wrong with it? I see something Impressionistic!
Great perspective from ubik, and yeah A.G. is right: it does get harder the older one gets and more often one gets their spirit trampled (including those who trample themselves)…..
Very interesting mea culpa, Claire. I don’t know if you are the guy who used to write for the L.A. Times or perhaps Artforum back in the early ’60s, but I believe you gave the very first critique my brother’s first book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations. I had met you through Rolf Nelson, the gallerist and what I remember most about you was that you were handsome and your eyes were, well… clear, albeit wet as if you had just finished crying. Perhaps you are Claire Wolfe, Jr. ~ maybe son of the guy I knew, but if not, so what, and hello through the ages. I hope you’ve had a great life, all the way to the present. I like what you wrote above because it addresses the angst of an artist, whereas I wrote a book about living through the art of other artists ~ to wit, about collecting art and of knowing or not knowing the artists themselves. I don’t really blog or post what i write, but a woman I’ve known for a long time (who is also an artist) suggested I read your blog, and I thank her for that tip and I just wanted to tip my hat to your appraisal of what you are searching for. If you do respond, I probably won’t see your response, but it was an interesting flashback I felt when reading what you wrote because of the that first introduction so long ago…
Hey, A.G.—good observation about what happens to toddlers. This was written just the other day, mostly explaining it:
http://splendorquest.com/?p=257
Wow, does that guy (at splendorquest.com) know how life works! And thus “sheep” were born.
“Learning new things and stretching outside of our comfort zone tends to become exponentially more difficult as the years go by.” (from A.G.)
…Until we become paralyzed by the idea of any originality, in thought or deed. So middle-aged fears youth and demands conformity from it, and old age fears life itself and prefers to die rather than challenge or try.
It is nice, in a very abstract way 😉
I just finished reading “Talent is Overrated”. It drives home the point that being good at things, really good, takes time and practice. And that also means lots of ‘failure’ along the way. It may not have turned out as you envisioned it, but I’ll bet you have learned something from each of your so called failures.
Did you get it out of you while you were working on it? You know what I am talking about. For those who look on the finished work they obtain a specific value from it. For those that produce the work that value is drastically different. I have a difficult time letting go of the finished work because in my mind its never finished. There does however come a time in the process where I burn out and exhaust the energy that inspired the peice to begin with. At that point there is no longer any flow, resistance has built up and the circuit is no longer connected. As long as you were in the moment and the work was flowing from you then you should have drained that energy from yourself. It really does not matter what the final product “looks” like for the creator its all about creating not what happens on the other side. Not every creation is a master work.
I have just experienced an epic failure (at least it’s epic to me). I’m not sure what is worse, the self-doubt, the self-recrimination, or the absence of the thing-that-it-was-before-failure, especially when it was such a large part of your life. Every day it is so hard to make just one little step to move on. But I know that is what I must do.
My Mom always told me “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”, and when she was dying of cancer she said “It’s ALL small stuff.”
Bless you, Mom.
So many wise observations here. We must all have a lot of experience learning from failure.
Judy — SO much wrong with it. It’s faux impressionistic. The technique is labored, the colors muddy, the overall effect too flat. I will give myself points for a decent composition — and I’m intrigued by the people who said it either drew them in in a dreamlike way or felt ominous to them. I didn’t have anything like that in mind, but those comments pointed me toward the real heart of the matter. And Grenadier1 pinpointed the heart of the problem: no real creative flow — no “getting it out.” Just laboring. I need to go back in more relaxed and really “seeing” the thing in my imagination.
Paul Ruscha — I’m not that Claire Wolfe, nor his son. But I hope you’ll stick around. And thank you for further contributing to the mystery/mystique of my identity. I’m female, but rumor has abounded for years that I may be a guy. Such misdirection is always welcome. 🙂
Oh yeah, and for those of you who offered to dispose of the picture … LOL and thank you. But I’ll take care of that myself. Nice and safely.
Big Wooly — I’m really sorry to hear that. I hope some of the wisdom from commentors here helps you as much as your mom’s advice did.
Big Wooly:
Sometimes we make the mistake of assuming all the guilt when it’s not all ours to assume….sometimes you have to point to something else and just assign it it’s portion, even if you want to protect it….If it’s involving some other person, sometimes their reality clashes with yours…..
That’s the thing about life, it always changes….sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes you don’t want it to happen…..and sometimes you’re left “on the side of the road” blindsided and confused……
In one of those painful little steps, you’ll discover your next adventure, so not only are they important to take to move forward but they also open up paths you may have missed otherwise….so, keep stepping…..:)
Hey, all y’all are supposed to be succoring Claire, not me, lol!
Seriously, I do appreciate everything that was said in these comments. It’s all so poignant to me at this time in my life. I’d like for everyone to know that one of the main reasons I read this blog is for this feeling of community. It truly is a wonderful virtual gulch you have here, Claire.
Failure seems to be a fairly common human event and I realize that it’s not the failure, but how we respond to it that counts. I am old enough to know that no matter how painful it is, “this too shall pass”. But I am young enough to wish that it would hurry the hell up.
Thank you, everyone.
And Claire? I like it. It looks like something that may be, with a dash of what is.
It’s a wonderful virtual gulch, indeed, Big Wooly. Glad you’re part of it. The collective (dare I use that word) wisdom and kindness goes deep around here.
But succoring me? Oh let’s hope not this time! Blogistas have indeed given me succor, and pretty recently at that. But I deserve no succor for producing bad art. That post was and should be all about getting up, dusting off our fannies, and going on. One lousy picture shouldn’t get me down — especially not when others (you, for instance) have more need. That people also offered art critiques, good thoughts, and laughter is just a plus.
But “something that may be, with a dash of what is …” I like that. Funny how you guys are helping me find the vision I didn’t have when I attempted that painting.
I don’t know what’s happening with your life and you don’t need to say. I’m just glad you know you’re among friends. Smart and compassionate ones, at that.
“For those who look on the finished work they obtain a specific value from it. For those that produce the work that value is drastically different.”
Wow, what a wonderful phrasing. The world will begin to change when people understand that it’s the value to the producer that counts.
Indeed, there wouldn’t even be a consumer but for what he’s able to produce. That’s why the country is falling—everyone’s looking for the consumer first. Can’t happen—there must be production first, and that got outlawed.
Claire, you are not a good artist. You are not a bad artist either. Not one of your mistakes nor any of your many successes will ever change you from being YOU. It really is that simple. Thinking about it this way really makes trying to compare yourself to others… well, silly. And comparing your art against others` becomes nothing more than an art discussion.
Being you is something which no one else has ever done. Yet you do it perfectly every time. And let me tell you, being you is pretty darn special. You affect lots of us out here and there is no greater gift than the ability to affect others — you have this ability because we have freely given it to YOU.
Take care and have a wonderful day just being.
I truly love Fish’s second paragraph and last sentence…..I’ve read a ton of self help crap – never heard it explained this way before; it’s so cool and it just oozes freedom-and-equal values……
That should be on a plaque and read every day by many of us…..
Sorry to steal it from you Claire 🙂 but thanks for inspiring this to pop out….gee, there’s been alot of success come from your “failed art” thoughts – -…
I was too embarrassed to respond to FishOrMan’s post, so I’m glad you did, naturegirl.
I swear I didn’t write this post looking for comforting words; I just figured we all sometimes need a reminder about dusting ourselves off and getting on with life. But yeah … there are definitely many thoughts here you could put on a plaque, FishOrMan’s the latest.
So yeah. You’re right. This comment thread is a perfect (albeit small) example of how good things come from failures. Thank you.
Don’t be embarrassed, you have earned that…:)
I should be embarrassed I stole it, LOL….
It may not seem that way, but there’s a ton of freedom in this blog and especially in these comments…..freedom comes in many forms; but the hardest battle for it is the one we have with ourselves ;)……