Currently Teaching: Make Your Mark!
I knew I was an artist before I ever painted a thing because I had such a desire to create it wouldn’t leave me alone. I would visit a museum, or see something on Pinterest, or read a creative blog post and think, “I want to do that!” But, I didn’t know where or how to start. Have you ever felt the same?
When we hear intuitive painting, artists make it look so easy. We see “successful” artists creating beautiful marks and paintings and think they are gifted. In reality this seemingly effortless production of interesting or accomplished work probably started with a repertoire of marks used over and over again, over a significant period of time.
I liken it to when I used to teach math. I had to prepare my students for standardized tests and one of the most challenging tasks was multi-step problems. The way we tackled this was to practice and memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. If they could master these with automaticity then multistep problems would become so much easier and less time consuming.
And so, I try to encourage my adult students to channel their elementary school selves and get to the work of practice and repetition. And of not being afraid to make crappy work.
I challenge you to make your marks. Messy and imperfect. And trust that over time… it will sort itself out.
“HABITS CREATE THE FOUNDATION FOR MASTERY. THIS IS TRUE FOR ANY ENDEAVOR. WHEN YOU KNOW THE SIMPLE MOVEMENTS SO WELL THAT YOU CAN PERFORM THEM WITHOUT THINKING, YOU ARE FREE TO PAY ATTENTION TO MORE ADVANCED DETAILS. IN THIS WAY, HABITS ARE THE BACKBONE OF ANY PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE.”