Art!

I am enjoying my ‘octopus period’

Even if no one else seems to get it

I am oddly inspired to make painting after painting of…

well…

octopus after octopus

I’m sure my housemates think its crazy.

And maybe it is.

What I find interesting about myself, is how I can’t really get out of my possibly delusional perspective.

I like my paintings.

I think that they work.

I really do.

My last one is the most abstract and I think, the most successful. Not one other person (to date) shares this opinion.

So I could be wrong.

Yet. Wrong or not, I’m compelled to carry on.

Artists have struggled with this very concept for hundreds of years. Making art that isn’t well received and continuing to do it anyway has always been a thing. Where is my Gertrude Stein when I need her?

Is my work terrible?! Am I? Will I ever stop wondering this? Or could that be an odd part of the process?

Do others have to approve for it to be viable?

I remember back in competitive art school. Being correct, being acurate, being talented enough to justify being there, was the soup we lived in. These thoughts were important and relevant, (they seemed to be at the time) to all of us young students.

Now? I think more possibilities exist. I even believe contradictory conclusions can be true at the same time.

Art is weird.

So many factors go into creation. So many different outcomes occur, even simultaneously. Think of all the different trees there are in the world. None are actually ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Even so, people have opinions.

About trees, about art about everything.

People have opinions because they have preferences. Preferences are good! They are defining and tangible, and even help show us who we are.

But opinions are opinions. Personal to each person.

No one taught us that we should try to please as many people as possible with our art, but few were immune to flattering words, especially from an instructor.

One student I remember had questionable skill and/or talent, plus he never nailed an assignment. Not once did he pose any competitive threat to anyone. He would show up day after day with his heavy handed rough interpretations of the teachers carefully articulated instructions. Tack them up with the rest of the classe’s and sit back nonchalantly as if daring anyone to question his work.

He was a little older and married and was the only one I knew who declared easily that he intended to be a studio artist. I hope he is ridiculously successful today. Someone should have hired him to teach us bravado.

Cultivating a healthy amount of not caring about other’s opinions is a good practice. In life, as well as in art. Anytime we lose motivation over letting another’s opinion influence us, we lose a little of something. I notice that even as I ‘fish’ for some positive feedback, I feel off.

There was a study about motivation that surprised researchers. They found that children who were praised and rewarded for doing something they liked doing, like coloring or playing ball, lost interest faster than kids who received no praise. Often the praised kids would quit entirely, the unpraised kids returned again and again and spent longer blocks of time.

As usual, I feel a lesson sinking in. Something about believing before the rest of the world catches up. How else can I step out into the unknown and make something original? Ironically, my three year old octopus idea is hardly feeling original lately.

But my art surely is.