Inspiration Fridays! Does Your Art Work Even When You Don’t?
Does Your Art Work Even When You Don’t?
This week, I stood in the studio staring at a couple of half-finished paintings. The colors were all over the place, the composition felt busy, and my energy for it was nowhere. The petty voice with no solutions whispered that everything about my paintings felt wrong.
“If you’re an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.” – Willem de Kooning
My first instinct? First response? Maybe tomorrow would bring better light, a clearer head, a better mood. Maybe I’ll find something on Instagram to inspire me.
But art doesn’t care about your mood. It doesn’t need you to feel inspired or even content. What it needs is your presence.
Powerful work is formed when we are up against it. When we have every reason and opportunity to stop. Moments when our frustration and self-doubt loom large will teach us the most. Steadily chipping away at the monolith in front of us. Forced to look deeper, try harder, and reach beyond the comfort of what’s easy.
This is why we create. Art as a smiling mirror. It reflects back not only your skill but your determination, your resilience, and your willingness to stay with the process. It asks: Can you keep going? And it reminds us: The answers will come.
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Halfway studio visions
Painting isn’t about waiting for the perfect conditions. It’s about picking up the brush anyway. Trusting that even when your energy wains low and your palette is caked with the dried hues of doubt, each mark you make brings you closer to the realization of your vision.
In fact, the simple act of creating can change that wretched mood. It can pull us out of the fog and reconnect us with the present. It can. But only if we show up.