Inspiration Fridays! How do you go from doubt to curiosity?
How do you go from doubt to curiosity?
I don’t draw because I know I should, I draw because I want to discover what things look like.
“The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.” – Buckminster Fuller
The act of painting or drawing the world around us comes supercharged with both hope and doubt. Recording what we see immediately involves comparison and judgment. It can feel loaded. The deck is stacked against us. How can we possibly do justice to the beautiful immensity of what we see before us?
What is this doubt? It’s fear. Fear that the recording of what we see won’t stand up to the scrutiny of others or even what we imagine the outcome should be in our own heads.
What is this hope? It’s curiosity. The excitement that comes from discovering how what we see in front of us is translated by our mind and by our hand. The discovery of who we are in relationship to the world around us.
Portraits from life over the years.
When I sit down and paint a portrait of someone I know, I get to look at them again in a completely different way. I’m not drawing the story I have cataloged in my head about who they are, I’m responding to the uniqueness of that person sitting in front of me. The more sensitive I am to the nuances and characteristics of their features, the closer we become.
Seeing each plane of the face, and the subtle shifts in color and value, and recording them faithfully, brings that person to life on the canvas. What makes a portrait powerful is understanding how to see who is sitting in front of me and then allowing myself to get out of the way.
“That’s fine for you,” you might say, “but I can’t draw a face.”
Well, neither could I. But I love looking, and I’ve discovered that the process of learning is a lot simpler and less scary than thinking about what we don’t know.
Letting go of the need to be right (our doubt) and embracing the desire to explore (our curiosity) is an incredibly inspiring way to live.