The Life and Times of the Plume

I am not a painter.  I am learning to paint.  I don’t want to paint like anyone else.  I want to paint like myself.  Like me.  There is no other me.  Why would I want my paintings to look like someone else made them?  Why would I want my paintings to look like something that has already been painted?  Why would I want to stand in front of a canvas and paint from a dishonest place, swipe paint with a liar of a hand and a dishonest heart?  I want to paint like myself and no one else.  This doesn’t mean that I want to make something that the world has never seen before.  I don’t care about that.  I’m not sure that’s possible.  But I want the work to be original to me, as in, it truly wells up out of me, unaffected and true.  I am private about my painting.  It is a selfish pursuit.  I’m also afraid.  I think I am private because I am afraid.  I am afraid to make ugly paintings but I know I will — I just realized this fact two days ago.  I will probably paint one hundred ugly, meaningless paintings before I paint just one good and strong painting that is honest and true.  If I can make that single honest painting after painting one hundred awful pieces of trash, I will be on the threshold of heading in the general direction of perhaps being a painter some day.  But there’s something else you should know.  I want to be honest about the entire process of learning to paint and I do not want to rush that process.  I want to take all the time I need.  I want to wade through all the failure that comes with the small successes and I want to see the breadth of my effort, appreciate my effort, appreciate the honesty of my effort, and I want to work hard and stay humble (which is harder than you might think).  I might not make a wholly beautiful painting until I am eighty years old.  That’s ok.  I loathe the idea of rushing success, of being obsessed by success, of not putting in my time, of not working my heart out, of caring more about achievement than the actual creative work.  I think rushing towards success creates bad habits and meaningless work.  I cannot abide by that.  I want my work to have meaning.  I want to paint.  So I am painting.  As honestly as I can.  I am as patient with myself as I can be.  I don’t really know how to begin, I’ve been beginning for a while now, so I continue to start small, as I always do.

I do not want to make the marks I have seen others make, no matter how much I like their work, no matter how beautiful those marks might be.  I want to realize what my own marks are and use them when I am painting.  This means taking the time to loosen myself up, play, create like a child does.  This means pastels!  This means late at night, I sit down on the living room floor with my big sketchbook and I simply play.  I allow myself no more than two or three minutes for each page.  I unbind myself from self-consciousness and I literally scribble in oil pastels, chalk pastels and charcoal.  I randomly draw shapes and forms without allowing myself to think too much.  Sometimes I reach out and smear it all to heck.  I roll my sleeves up higher on my arms and go crazy.  I work for an hour.  I create thirty pages of zaniness and freedom.  I feel happy and poured out.  I look over the thirty pages of work and try to notice any preferred forms, shapes, colors, smearing and shading — little details that catch my eye.  I don’t take anything too seriously.  If something is ugly, I don’t take it hard, I remember I gave myself two minutes to pour color out on a page and if the page turned out ugly, it’s ok.  If ten pages are ugly, it’s ok.  Ugly is ok.  Ugly is part of it all.  Ugly can be honest.  It is what it is.  I have, for the moment, unshackled myself from my fear.  I am free of it.  As I look over the pages of work, maybe, on some tiny section of one page I see something I like.  Maybe I see something I love!  That tiny thing that I notice, that tiny honest thing was worth the thirty pages of work.  I am elated.  So I do thirty pages more.

The work is worth the work and someday, I might be a painter.