making a mess of things, or "failure as progress"
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“Somehow I knew that nothing I was doing could be a mistake, because at least I was trying to do something.”
I’ve recently finished reading Art is Life, the collected essays and reviews of New York magazine’s senior art critic, Jerry Saltz. Because I’m very nerdy I record all the books I read in an app (the one I use is called Bookshelf and gives me everything I want from this sort of app, which is honestly quite a lot), along with sentences I like and want to remember. If I’m being honest, Art is Life was a bit of a slog at times (it took me 10 days to read, wow), but some gems in there made it definitely worth sticking with, and I wound up opening Bookshelf to record little chunks increasingly frequently as I went on. The above quote is from My Appetites and refers to when the socially anxious and somewhat floundering Saltz began to pursue the life he wanted (a writer in the art world) at the age of around 40, pushing himself to go out into society more and forge connections. I can relate to this introversion in a very deep way, and reading this essay the day after I went to a party almost purely out of the desire not to be a desperately boring girlfriend, I found it comforting on several levels. (I ended up being glad I went to the party, almost inevitably!)
It also chimed perfectly with the topic I had already decided to write about in this week’s note. Whilst I was reading Art is Life, I saw some words from another of Saltz’s books pop up on my Instagram.
soosumsee on instagram
It was posted by someone really feeling the pressures of trying to make a living as a creative. I had been down and doubting myself that week*, and it felt like nice timing to be reminded of this page from How to be an Artist. (Although I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you notice things that are relevant to you when you do!)
I do think it’s important to remember that you don’t have to be at your easel with a brush in your hand to be creating - that actually to make something new you have to have periods of absorbing outside inspiration, thinking about something entirely different, resting your mind and your body. Stepping away from something that is making my head hurt can be essential - when I come back to it I see it differently and suddenly I know exactly what I have to do. Even better, sometimes I see that, actually, I don’t have to do anything and the piece I thought was total shit and kept me awake wondering why was I SO BAD at painting… is actually, um, pretty good? I can forget this and need the reminder.
But something I probably find even more helpful and yet struggle with constantly is actively producing stuff that is quite shit. Whether it's an experiment in my sketchbook or the early stages of a new painting where I'm simply roughly blocking out colours, I get so uncomfortable when I am making marks that look ugly or awkward or just boring. I feel the compulsion to stash my sketchbook and start a fresh new one as soon as I "spoil" a page with some murky colours, to cover a canvas in white when a painting doesn't quickly make sense to me.
Maybe this is a side-effect of Instagram (a lot is), where for the most part we only see the beautiful finished article or the pages of a sketchbook that are aesthetically pleasing. Or maybe this is an intrinsic characteristic of mine, where I want a do-over on a nice blank slate as soon as I fuck up... I actually know the answer: it’s both. This fear of making something that isn't very good can be crippling; if you don't try you can't fail, which can seem massively alluring sometimes, to put it mildly.
But one thing proves itself to me over and over again. These crappy, ugly splurges of random paint marks are just as essential to a finished piece of art that I'm happy and proud of as the pretty, satisfying ones. Everything is part of the process. Painting on a canvas or a piece of paper and every mark being beautiful is not the definition of 'the work'. The finished piece is the sum total of
Swipes of paint in a sketchbook
The first awkward marks on a blank canvas
Weird, muddy colours you 'invent' on the palette
Doodles on random bits of paper
The paint you lay down on the canvas that looks dull and uninspired with the previous colour you put down
The paintings you did three years ago that you know will most likely stay tucked away in a file forever
The wild streaks of paints you slashed and smeared across a work in progress when your lost your shit in frustration and took it out on the canvas
All these things tell me what I don't like and what doesn't work, and I need to know this equally as much as I need to know what I do like and what does. Sitting and imagining what something might look like is absolutely nowhere near as effective as picking up a brush and finding out (I'm sure this holds true for life more generally, but I don’t want to think about that right now, thank you).
Maybe this sounds incredibly obvious - painting (and other creative practices) is a physical activity. But whilst I feel like quite a lot is said about the importance of rest and taking time away from the studio, I don't see so much about the significance of the preparatory work, the experiments, the rough versions. This is the work you do that should have no pressure on it, and yet… So often I still feel it! I love painting more than almost anything in the world, but I feel this pressure to a paralyzing extent at times.
But I am gradually getting my head around it. Learning that nothing has to be permanent, nothing has to be shown to the world, but that it all feeds into the piece of work you do want to keep and share with people. And this uncomfortable, frequently frustrating process has its own immediate rewards. It's by noodling around and trying things out with no plan that unexpected moments happen on the paper that you could never have thought up deliberately. A random shape, a surprisingly good colour juxtaposition, a weird slip of the hand - all of a sudden you've got something that makes your eyes light up and fills you with excitement. You make a mistake and, in rectifying it, you end up with something you loved more than the original idea. It's like the excitement that kicks in when you start to see a piece of work that has so far looked disjointed and unattractive (not like a painting at all, just a weird mess) come together, and, in an instant, you can see its promise, the glimmer of potential as it coheres and becomes an actual piece of art. It's a feeling that is made all the better for the discomfort that's preceded it. To this end, I have learned to take pictures at every stage of a painting - photographic proof that there's nearly always a difficult stage to pull through, some chaos to manage.
During the period that I've been writing this, I've worked on two smallish paintings. I have loved every second of working on them both. I wanted to be able to take a photo of the early stages and say, “see, this is what I mean, isn't it gross!!?” But they've both been really satisfying from the beginning. Soo disappointing! Except, of course, they haven't really. Because the 'beginning' was when I developed this style three years ago, or even earlier, when I first started painting in earnest three or four years before that. And there's been plenty of awful painting in that time - it’s what got me to this point.
Another quote from Art is Life concerns Robert Rauschenberg and his interest in "the ability to conceive failure as progress." I love this so much. Now, when I look at some weird page in my sketchbook or a bunch of colours on a canvas that make no sense together, I am trying not to see failure. My goal is to always see it as progress.
*This is actually quite funny! I thought that a couple of my paintings had been returned to their gallery and so I decided I was worthless, nobody could ever like my paintings, etc, etc. But then it turned out they hadn’t been returned, or maybe they resold, I’m not sure… Either way, I immediately cheered back up, so this is a fun anecdote about how sometimes it’s a waste of time to doubt yourself / that apparently my sense of self-worth is entirely dependent on other people, ha ha.
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