Stick to what you know
I’ve been reading this book my little buddy Miles gave me. So far it’s pretty good-there are parts that I find preachy and a little 12 step-ish but for the most part it’s very informative and beneficial. It’s based on the thought that things happen in our life that hinder or help us achieve our goals and that you need to resolve the ones that hinder in order to live a full filled, creative life as an artist. Part of that process is called time travel where you go back into your past and find the situation and reasons why certain things hinder your development- then you write about them in order to process them.
Two things came to mind for me but were significant enough to make me stop doing art for 16 years. The first was negative feedback from a watercolor teacher i had while I was in college in California. I don’t really remember the details other than he really loved my paintings- IF they were flowers. Sure, flowers are pretty and all, i just wanted to paint people and other things. My teacher used to constantly tell me “STICK TO WHAT YOU KNOW!” I disregarded what he said and I ventured out one time and painted an Asian woman sitting on a hard wood floor. I was VERY proud of this picture. We had critiques and my teacher would pick a few of our paintings and then we would pick a few. I choose the Asian lady and pinned it up next to the 4 floral ones my teacher picked. He oohed and awed over my flowers but when he got to the Asian lady he flat out said “i don’t like it, it doesn’t appeal to me.” I was shocked and argued with him about it trying to point out what I found beautiful. He continued to criticize it in what I found to be an unfair manner. I was hurt and angry. I ended up leaving the class early (and probably very dramatically) and I went home and cried in my room for hours. I didn’t go back to his class again- only to pick up my pictures. He had left me a note that he wanted to see me and that he wanted to display some of my FLORAL pictures in an art show. I remember that feeling like it was somehow insult to injury so i took a sharpie marker and wrote on the Asian lady’s matt board ” ART IS NOT DONE TO APPEAL TO THE VIEWER. THIS IS MY CREATION” and I signed my name and left it on his desk. I took all my other paintings home with me minus the Asian lady with the heart broken message on the matt board. Some how I got this painting back because I found it and the matt board just yesterday while I was looking through some old art stuff. Over the years I’ve thought about this situation and convinced myself the painting was probably out of proportion and hideous. When I saw it yesterday, i realized I still really like it. It appeals to me. And that is really ALL that is important. I googled the David McGuire- convinced he’d died and gone straight to hell, but he’s still very alive and painting beautiful watercolors. Looking back I realize he was a very good and fair teacher. He taught me a lot and he was a funny guy. With the exception of his harsh remarks about my Asian Lady, he was a really good teacher and an amazing artist. I can live with that.
T