Inspiration Fridays! Does Inspiration Take Work?
Does Inspiration Take Work?
Last week’s post started with my statement that “painting should be thrilling”, and it should be. But it’s not always that way. Sometimes it feels like work. And sometimes it feels like it’s not working at all.
“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
When I’m inspired to try something new, I take big bites. Like the young fever achieved from a heady combination of Saturday morning cartoons, orange juice chugging, and power-eating bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios. The rush of the new is palpable, and it’s also fleeting. The afternoon would find me face down drooling on the living room carpet. But even at that tender age, I knew that I had to push through and reset or the weekend would be lost.
In the same way, starting a series of paintings is all thrills, with a full serving of energy bursts included in every box. The starts are magical because they’re new, and new is always exciting. But halfway through the process, some of the paintings will inevitably hit a rough patch. The novelty has worn off and I’m face-to-face with a painting that’s unwilling to give me anything back. The thrill is gone.
What does this mean? That I don’t know how to paint? That this painting is crap? Is this yet another confirmation that I should’ve been a dentist? All are possibilities for sure, but the real truth is that creating art, like anything else, takes work to do well.
Breath in the beauty, breath out the paintings.
The solution is in the doing. Instead of seeing these mediocre paintings as failures and proof that you should never have been a painter in the first place, recognize the opportunity. If you don’t love it, there’s no harm in continuing to paint until you do. And the beauty is in there. Believe me. It turns out that the painting was just teasing you. Testing your resolve. You may only be a brushstroke away from a breakthrough.
Sometimes it means taking big risks. If we’re not in love with the painting at this stage, where is the harm in doing something radical and brave? Even if our new solution doesn’t work, that risk leads us back to paintings that are thrilling to paint, and painting should be thrilling.