I’m a recovering perfectionist.
Several years ago when I started making paintings my mom said “I’m so glad you’re painting again!”
Again??? What is she talking about? This is my first time painting. I haven’t done this before. This is new!
She explains how bummed she is that she accidentally got rid of / lost some of my childhood paintings. I guess I painted a lot when I was younger. And I blocked it out.
But now that I write that, somewhere in the memory vault I can see a glimpse of my younger self destroying a small canvas because I smudged it or made a mistake. I shoved it into a corner of my closet. That might have been it.
Graphic design is a lot safer than painting. There’s “undo” and “delete” and endless editing until it’s just right. But still, it’s no wonder I picked screen printing as my favorite design output medium (and made a business out of it). It’s one of the closest printing methods to paint.
I have always loved making things with my hands. But one thing I really remember is thinking that I was inherently bad at painting. I have a distinctive childhood crafting trauma (everyone has one… please tell me yours) burned into the essence of my soul from a time I was using puffy paint on a white crew neck sweatshirt for a girl scouts project. I cared about it a lot and worked really hard. I was almost finished with the final lettering part when I smudged what I had just wrote, ruining the whole thing at the very end. I was destroyed. 7 years old, defeated, sobby angry tears, with puffy paint all over the place. That person lives inside me!!!
I’m left-handed, so, in order to write from left to right my hand rests right where I just wrote, hence smudges. It happened a lot, and this particular left-handed puffy paint tragedy likely solidified a rooting belief that there was something inherent in the way I was that meant I just couldn’t and shouldn’t touch paint if I wanted to be happy and not disappointed. And that lasted a while I guess.
Until it didn’t. There are so many reasons why I felt compelled to turn to painting when I did, but I think one of them was secretly to activate this unresolved part of myself.
If something scares you and you still really want to do it, it must be important.
Fast backward to the first year of making paintings “again”. I was finishing the largest painting I had made so far, for a small art show. This picture was taken by my friend Amanda and I distinctively remember holding my breath with each paint stroke because I was afraid of making too wobbly of a mistake and especially ruining it at the last minute. Sound familiar?
HOLDING MY BREATH. Folks. I did this all of the time. As if limiting the movement of the life force would help me. Or protect me. Or make me better. Or prevent disaster. I have so much compassion for this version of myself now.
Perfect shapes and crisp lines are really satisfying and soothing to me. And this year I realized that something else is also quite amazing - and that’s the evidence of the human hand in the art.
Imperfect outlines and visible texture used to make me feel uncomfortable. And now I love them more than anything.
So I guess now that I’ve been breathing freely, taking risks don’t feel risky, they just feel human. And normal. Creating shapes without pencil guides, soft rectangles, planting the brush down without overthinking, not hesitating, being more of a curious bystander about the outcome than a determinant. There’s still geometry and space and balance and simplicity in my paintings right now, but there’s more allowance and less desire for control in the process. Making art isn’t easy, and I don’t write all of this to say, here I am, 100% healed! But it’s definitely a marker in a good direction, an example of how stale beliefs can be softened and worked with through our practices.
All of that aside, I simply appreciate times I can have a full, free, unpredictable, whole, connected experience. Right now I’m embracing transparency, fluidity, texture, “mistakes”, uneven-ness. All of which are characteristics of nature.
I was showing this piece to my friend and telling her about how the blobby effect that happened in the green buckthorn ink (below, upper left corner) would have sincerely upset me 5 years ago, but it’s something I love most about this piece now because it shows the honest, fluid, responsive, truest nature of the material.
I love feeling myself move in a direction that would have been out of the question for a previous version of myself. I enjoy remembering life can change. I can change. And the definition of ‘perfect’ can change.
I’m writing this post to remind myself and you that everything you do already is perfect. The smudged paint is perfect. The discomfort is perfect. The curiosity is perfect. Every mistake and non-mistake is equally perfect. You are perfect.
P.S. I can’t help but wonder if the Final Boss Level in this particular game for me actually lives in a new bottle of puffy paint and like, a super soft sweatshirt. Y/N?
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Good words here ❤️ I’ve painted realistically my entire life & career and also held my breath and felt tense for much of the time. Now that I’m experimenting with looser, more childlike styles & mediums, I find I can breathe and embrace imperfections so much more readily.
needed this, thanks for sharing