the reinvention project week twelve
working through artist's freakout
Last week I tried my professional painting practice plan, and wrote about how successful I was. This week I crashed. I made a painting video, as my schedule called for on Sunday and Monday, but then I felt reluctant to publish it, because I wasn’t happy with the painting.
I also wasn’t up for putting more paintings up for sale on Artrepreneur (Wednesday’s task), doing any marketing (Thursday), or bringing a painting to completion (Friday).
I felt like I’d lost my way, with respect to both my reinvention and my painting. I didn’t even want to write my daily posts.
trust the process
I’ve been reading Shaun McNiff’s excellent book Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go. This has turned into my mantra: trust the process. Keep showing up. Do the practice. So even though I didn’t do what my professional painting practice called for, I did show up and paint every day this week. And I wrote and published a blog post each day too.
McNiff says:
It is such a commonplace saying within the creative arts that until recently I have been reluctant to utter the three words for fear of being trite: “Trust the process.” Whenever I find myself in a difficult situation, the principle is reaffirmed. Actually, the more hopeless my problem seems, the more I learn to trust the process.
There have been so many times when I have given up, only to go at it again the next day, or the next year, and over the full course of a life all of the moments appear so purposeful or even necessary. The difficulties are always the most important ingredients in the total picture of a creative experience.
Last week was upsetting, because my most favorite painting and one that was recognized on Artrepreneur as having merit no longer existed. I had signed it with a paint pen, and finding the signature clumsy, I tried to paint over it. In so doing, I ruined the painting.
I felt very clingy about that painting. It felt like the one good painting I had in me.
The experience made me question whether I even wanted to keep painting. It suddenly felt too risky, and I felt too wrong for it.
That difficulty that pushed me to do something new, to work through my artist’s freakout, to keep finding who I am as a painter.
This week I attempted to create a channel for the energy I felt in making that painting. There was something about the style that felt uniquely mine: the subtle yet vibrant and surprising colors, the large fields of warm gray-white (love me some off-white!), the obvious brush strokes, the layers of color and texture, the flourish of the scribble, the abstract mountain landscape-ish composition.
I have come up with a set of steps that are aimed at producing paintings in this style. In repeating such steps through multiple paintings and over a period of time, I hope I can develop my unique painting point of view.
I sometimes experience magic in painting, when everything comes together and instead of my being in charge, I feel possessed by a creative force greater than I am. It can be magical. A painting emerges quickly and as if from somewhere other than my mind.
McNiff describes how to find this magic:
This is yet another description of how the creative process works. Whether it involves learning how to read, playing the piano, riding a bike, or writing a graduate school thesis, there is usually a decisive moment or turning point within an overall process which can only be described as magical. It is an instant when all of the frustration, seemingly futile efforts, and tedious drills play their respective parts in a collective creation. This is what I describe as the “complex” of creativity, a condition that feels as though the individual person acts together with many other forces. A varied series of evengs and motions carry us over a new threshold, and we can never exactly describe how it happened.
Painting using a set series of steps will, I hope, allow this magic to happen more reliably, and help me feel good about painting again.
this week’s painting
In skier parlance, a yard sale is when you crash on the slopes and lose your gear as you tumble down, leaving the run looking like a garage sale. The painting featured above made me think of a (skier) yard sale, because of the slanting slope, the scribbled fall, and the vintage color scheme. This painting, I think, could hang in my mountain place (if only I had one).1
I used my newly-formulated set of steps to produce this painting. I feel pleased with it, as well as with a couple other small paintings I’ve created in this series. To me, the composition, colorway, and contrast feel fresh and uniquely mine. I felt energetic and connected when I painted it. I felt the magic again.
My goal is to produce a series of ten or so paintings of this style that I would be happy to put up for sale. I will probably use Saatchi Art instead of Artrepreneur. While Saatchi does take a 40% commission on sales, they have a larger audience, and my art would seem to fit there better.
I am not going to rush. When I open my store on Saatchi, I want to have a set of paintings ready that express my point of view, rather than the motley assortment of artworks that are currently relaxing in my closet.
I also plan to improve upon my ability to photograph the paintings, possibly even getting images that are good enough for print versions of my art. I feel a lot of energy in that direction; it is a way of taking advantage of my tech savvy.
This situation with the quality and, more important, the personality of my art reminds me a little bit of when I wrote a book back in 2007-2008. I did get a book finished but I wasn’t pleased with it. It wasn’t a book I felt good about or wanted to promote. It didn’t feel like a true expression of me. So while there is power in a binary mindset, where getting something done is more important than getting it done well, there are also times when it’s important to focus on the quality and expressiveness of the output.2 I know I can get a painting done. But can I create paintings that I want to market and sell? That’s the next step.
still at a crossroads
Despite my recent focus on painting, I haven’t yet committed to any particular course of action with this reinvention. Should I find a new full-time job, one that suits me better than the last one I had? Should I go all in on The Reinvention Project, turn it from a focus on my own reinvention to providing resources and support for others seeking career and personal transformation, start a reinvention podcast? Should I give myself time and space to see if I can turn my art into a business, selling original works and prints, and maybe offering tutorials and courses online? Figure out how to take good enough photos to sell printable images?
Each of these sounds appealing in its own way. I suspect I should soon cut back on all I am doing and make some commitment to one specific path forward.
It feels like forever ago that I wrote about the crossroads where I found myself, not sure how to move forward. It’s helpful to look back at that post and revisit the quote I shared from Jean Shinoda Bolen’s book Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty:
Hecate is at the crux of the situation when a woman enters the third phase of her life and heeds a pull inward. She appears indecisive or as if her energy is lying fallow, when she is in this liminal phase. If she stays at the cross road until she intuitively knows what direction to take, she emerges renewed and replenished.
I am as yet indecisive and my energy is not fully concentrated in one direction. I am in limbo, still. Reinventions and transformations take time, sometimes years. This one only began this year. No need to rush.
this week’s posts
Sunday planning — Day 78: Week twelve plan
Monday money — Day 79: On big tech capex spending
Tuesday book club — Day 80: Do not fear mistakes
Wednesday Q&A — Day 81: Should I cut back on all my activities?
Thursday thinker — Day 82: Structure vs spontaneity in creation
Friday flash — Day 83: Repetition
Saturday practice — Day 84: Tonglen compassion practice
Anne Zelenka is a painter, a mother, a writer, and a serial career reinventor. She occasionally writes about AI. She lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado with her 21-year-old daughter, 81-year-old mother, four cats, and two dogs.
It may not be to your taste, and that’s okay. I learned from a painting teacher once that you can’t predict what one person will like and another person won’t. Many people don’t like abstracts at all, or seek something more refined and less crude.
It’s rarely this or that. It’s almost always this and that. Get stuff done, but sometimes focus on getting it done well. Experiment with many possible identities and paths forward, but at some point commit to one.