How to Work Hard to Make Art & Miss the Point Entirely
What can an artist achieve in a year? How do we measure this? Growth in skill, number of paintings created, milestones achieved? Or is the life of an artist not really about metrics at all?
I used to hope to paint 3 good paintings each year. With small children demanding my time, I couldn’t expect more than that. How encouraging it felt, when I was able to make time to paint, to see that I hadn’t lost my grip on what I’d learned, and I’d perhaps even grown a little bit, despite my lack of discipline! Ambitious goals of growth wouldn’t have gained me anything more than discouragement.
Today, I have more time to paint, and a business that requires me to spend time painting. However I don’t measure my year in paintings anymore. I’m seeing more and more that being an artist is not counted in minutes spent painting, but in how I live my life.
What Art Demands
My art journey demands more from me than the movement of brush over paper. Beauty in art comes from beauty in life. This doesn’t mean I have to live a painless, perfect life. Finding beauty in brokenness is the work of the artists and poets of the world.
If my life is expended in the practice of learning to live wholly in the moment, wholeheartedly, I have something rich and beautiful to share in my art. My best work is created when I learn how to pour myself into my painting with openness, honesty, vulnerability, trust and love. Without demanding anything in return.
What Art Gives
I cannot come to the studio, depleted and anxious, and do anything more than seek my own rest and healing. Art can be a safe space for me to breathe. When I am most discouraged, hurt or grieving, I don’t have anything to give to my art, but I can receive what art has to give. I look. I may not have the heart to pick up my brush, but I can come to my creative space, and look through old paintings, reflect and remember. And I can step out of the studio and let beauty feed my soul. If I want to have anything to give my art, I need to allow myself to be nourished by beauty, watchful and attuned to it.
Allowing Space
As we anticipate a new year, I don’t set tangible goals for my art. I am in a marriage with watercolor; we are seeking a harmony of relationship that is found in allowing. Watercolor is what it is; I am who I am, and we are learning how to love each other without fear.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13:7
Love does not demand its own way; love can only exist in a relationship that trusts that for the love that is given, love will be received. My goal for this year is to continue to seek this life of love and art.
There will be failed paintings (so many!). There will be wrong color choices and watermarks and frustration that I didn’t meet my own expectations. There will be days when the steps to the studio feel like too many to climb. But art is a patient lover, and forgiving. I will seek this year to give my heart to my art; to start over without fear; to trust that art won’t give up on me when I am stubborn, impatient and slow to learn.
There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear. 1 John 4:18
In 2021, I am privileged to share my journey with a community of artists who are pursuing the same discovery of beauty, truth and love. I had intended this post to be a practical discussion of the Fearless Artist Community Membership and what we have planned for the year ahead, but if you come there with your to-do list of skills to be gained, you might miss the heart of why we are there to begin with.
Give your heart to your art. Trust it. Come to simply enjoy the act of putting paint to paper, looking for glimpses of beauty. Allow the painting to speak to you. Love what you do, even when the painting doesn’t turn out. And your relationship to art this year will grow richer than you ever imagined.
What are your heart-goals for your art in 2021? Leave a comment below and tell me about them.
