On painting

I’m sitting here watching paint dry. Literally. Just watching paint dry.

I haven’t painted much over the last year. My creativity and drive to paint comes and goes – mostly it just goes. Lately I’ve been trying to spend more and more time drawing and painting. I tried taking a drawing class, but it was less structured than what I wanted and needed, so I didn’t do much and skipped more classes than I went to. I hated spending the first hour of class drawing the same slideshow of animals over and over and over and over and you get the idea. I have a larger scale painting (16×20) of Hawaii just sitting around waiting to be finished. I just cant get the greens and the Na Pali coast to appear the way I want it to, so again its just been sitting.

Over the last few months I’ve been trying to force my way out of these ruts and stop just watching TV (other things have helped not just wanting to lay around… again more on that later.. so mysterious…). I can’t quite place exactly what happened or why, but I started drawing Mandalas. Oh! now I remember. I bought a coloring book last October in Portland that is more of an adult coloring book. There are more lines and the drawings are more complicated. There are no boobs. It is not that kind of adult coloring book.

I started running out of pages and so headed to the internet to search for more coloring books like it and then found a book on drawing mandalas. I was going to buy the book and then I remembered my job doesn’t pay that much and I live in San Francisco and I have the whole internet at my fingertips. I have the perfect square smooth watercolor paper for creating mandalas. They have helped me get back into drawing and art and also are a major stress reliever. I’ve loved doing them so much that today I decided that I wanted to paint a larger one in acrylics, so that is the paint that I’m waiting for to dry.

When I started this particular mandala, it didn’t look perfect. I almost gave up. I thought to myself – why am I painting this? I paint landscapes and flowers -something tangible that people can see and know what it is. Why am I painting this abstract thing? And why am I not making it perfect and intricate? Why am I just making it simple and letting my lines go wonky and not measuring my circles out perfectly. I almost stopped.

Then I realized what my issue has been with art all along. I’ve never done it just for me. I’ve always done it for the final product. I’ve always wanted to make sure that I created for an audience. That someone else was meant to enjoy my painting so it needed to be perfect.

Why was I doing this? Isn’t the purpose of art really and truly for the artist them self above anyone else? I mean, I know that not every work of art was created solely for the artist – there are commissions and jobs that involve art and all that jazz, but really the work that started it all and that someone goes home and does to relax, isn’t that just for them? If someone else walks along and likes it, then great, but it should ultimately be for you.

I went back to work on my painting after this realization. I’m going to finish it and I’m going to keep it and its going to remind me of where I have been and and to compare later when I’ve done a few more and want to see what strengths I’ve developed.

I feel freer. I feel like my little creative soul has been caged and scared all this time to just do things. Just draw shit and paint shit and do whatever I want to do without thinking about anyone else and how they feel about it. So onward and upward to using all of these blank canvases I have to create things!

Its not every day you have a life altering moment. I’m glad I had one today and that my Friday night is being spent watching paint dry and listening to music (I might stop the music and watch the Netflix series remake of Wet Hot American Summer because its funny and Paul Rudd). When my painting is done, I’ll post a final picture and some progress pictures and you all can look at it and like it or not like it, I don’t care. You’re not paying me for it. Unless you really like it and you want to.

In the meantime, here are the terrible (and awesome) mandalas that I’ve done over the past few months for fun.