Perfectionism is a hindrance to creating art

Perfectionism is a hindrance in creating art. Just make something and finish something. Don’t obsess over making a masterpiece. Just make more art. You can produce many things that are imperfect and have thousands of creations. Or you can spend your whole lifetime working on a masterpiece and have only one thing to show for it or even one that may never be created at all. Maybe , even, all of the imperfections truly do create masterpieces in their own right. 

People assume I’m a perfectionist because I’m an artist. i’m a perfectionist because I’m an artist. But the opposite is true. I am very messy. I work hard on cleaning up my messes. But when I’m in my creative zone, I am very messy. Whether it is cooking, choosing outfits, and, of course, painting, it gets very messy. And I don’t think anything has to be perfect. Sure I want the food to taste good and I want my outfit to look nice and I want my painting to be great, but I don’t obsess over details. I don’t follow recipes very well.

I never seem to have all of the ingredients on hand that I need to make the meal so I substitute things all the time. My family laughs at me because I wasn’t organized enough to make sure I got to the grocery store to buy all the ingredients I needed to make the recipe. But I am too spontaneous to worry about stuff like that. I just trust that things will work out. Even if my substitutions in a meal are ridiculous. I realize very quickly that not all flours are created equal. So the biscuits were a little harder than I wanted them to be. So what? They were OK and my family was fed so the job is done. Ha ha.!

My outfits can be a little Zen. I love to match and mix colours that may not necessarily be worn together. but the end of my outfit makes me happy. That’s all that matters. My hair is wavy and pretty out of control. But I’ve learned to live with the messy look. Yes, I do my hair, but my hair is my hair and I like it on the messier side I call it my beach Wave look or fresh from the studio look . I don’t always leave the house looking in the mirror at what I’m wearing or how my face looks or my hair.

I’ve been known to have a dab of paint on my forehead or in my hair that I didn’t notice before walking into the grocery store. But, people remember me, I was a little weird. And my husband says you’re an artist, so you can get away with a lot of things.

I am married to someone who is more of a perfectionist. And that is good. Because we balance 

each other out. If I was married to someone like myself, I would drive myself crazy. If I wanted to marry myself, I would’ve stayed single my entire life. But we found each other and we are pretty much complete opposites. But we like a lot of the same things so it works.

So back to art and perfectionism. I don’t really struggle with obsessing over a single painting for months at a time. I love the feeling of accomplishing a work in a shorter amount of time. I became quicker at painting when my son was little. When he was a baby and still taking naps, they say that you should nap when your baby does, but I felt the urgency to create when he was sleeping. Yes, I was exhausted. And yes, I was probably grumpy a lot, but I loved the feeling I had that I accomplished something that day as a young mom. I was adding to my collection slowly, especially when my son was young. But it also helped me with discipline in that, even though I was tired, I could push through and create art. It was very fulfilling.

So my UNdesire to be perfect, has given me the freedom to be quite prolific, and produce hundreds and thousands of paintings over the last 20 years. As I said earlier, you can obsess over a single piece for a long period of time and have one piece of art to show for it. Or, you could paint something as best you can, and then move on and paint another and another and another. In my Opinion, painting, more paintings, makes you a better painter. Not obsessing over one single painting for months or even years.

Painting more paintings also allows you to see your progression. You can see how you’ve improved. And if every single painting you painted was a masterpiece, then are any of them really that special? Sure, I paint to accomplish a great painting at the end of the painting session, but I never start out thinking that I’m going to create a masterpiece. One out of every one  or two or 300 paintings is exceptional. And I like it that way. If a few stand out over the course of my career, then I am satisfied. I feel the greatest satisfaction out of seeing the amount of paintings I’ve created over a lifetime, and also the satisfaction of seeing that many being sold. And out of my studio And in someone’s home to enjoy . After all, all of these paintings that I make are not just for me. They are meant to go out into the world. So I’m going to use my life to create every day. I’m going to use it to build, create and scatter. I will scatter them like seeds. Hoping they will continue to grow long after they’ve been planted.

Create art for the enjoyment of it. Remove the perfection element,  and then you have a free artist.