"Pretend you are dancing a painting," suggested renowned art teacher Robert Henri nearly a century ago. My teacher, William Schultz (whose teacher studied with Henri), would constantly remind us, "Don’t look for results." Hard as this is to do, he is saying the same thing as Henri -- the marks we make on a canvas are secondary to the set of feelings that take place as we make them. The point is to not tighten up, not to be afraid, and not to evaluate our painting as we make it.
I think the essential thing is our need to find validation for our efforts. Who doesn’t want to get that good feeling we get when we are happy with the results? Or maybe we need to supply a gallery and we are up against a deadline. Or as I find with students who trek all the way to Italy to take a workshop, there is a degree of pressure to return with proof that the huge undertaking was worth it. I am always reminding students it is far better to take home knowledge than a slew of mediocre paintings, but tell that to friends and family. After all, the proof is in the pudding, is it not?
The problem, I think, is that each of the validations mentioned above, the gallery, the friends and family, even the painting we make for ourselves, are external validations. And because the proof is, indeed, in the pudding, nothing is more frightful than to see our worst fear confirmed, "Oh my gosh, I’m no good!"
Take Joy From the Process of Creating a Painting
So let me turn Henri’s admonition around to make his insight a little easier to digest. Suppose when we danced, a product resulted, the quality of which corresponded to the quality of our dancing? What would be the impact on the way we danced? My guess is that we would tighten up. We might look stiff, even lousy. In short, dancing would be an activity riddled with anxiety and fear.
It is in virtue of dancing being without product that we are able to dance freely, expressively, and with joy. Who cares? In fact, with my generation, steps went out the window altogether. Dancing becomes that wonderful metaphor of joy precisely because the validation we receive is internal. The measure of the activity is the feeling we have as we do it. And so it should be as we paint.
It is not especially easy, but when we turn off that little critical voice and when we really don’t look for results, we are far more able to surrender to that song from within. The irony, of course, is that when all this energy pours through us, the process becomes that wonderful state of being that makes art possible. The results are so much better. And paintings are just those things that happen as we discover and create who we are.
