Developing a New Process - Week 2
Fun seems to be allowed after all….
This week has been kind of intense as far as painting is concerned. I do have a TON to say about it, but for this post I want to restrict myself to talking about a very general aspect of my work which I have kind of rediscovered during this week’s studies. I do have some technical things that I have noticed as well, and I do want to focus on those at some point too, but that will have to wait for the next post.
As I have talked about in my last post, I am sort of on a quest to reestablish my process and the general way I go about making paintings. I talked about how I have adopted a process in the last years which has enabled me to create very reliable results but which also cost me a great deal of enjoyment in the process of painting. I have continued thinking about this a lot this week, and at some point it struck me how curious it is that I—in a way—forbid myself to have fun in the process in order to arrive at a finished painting that I would "deem worthy." It got so far that fun, for me, became something that does not "really" belong in the process of creating art. Quite the opposite, actually. I made myself believe that feelings of "grinding through," of having to "endure the process," of having to fight through boredom were the feelings I had to pursue in order to be creating meaningful art and improving my skills as a painter.
As cringely "deep" as these ideas might seem, I do think that the roots of them are very obvious and shallow. All of these thoughts are textbook "hustle culture" ideas which are hammered into everybody’s heads on the internet these days. Meaningful progress needs to be difficult, and it needs to be fought through vigorously. This week it struck me how much I actually fell for that and how utterly miserable all of it is.
It's cool to notice myself breaking out of this destructive mindset; at the same time, I can't help but feel a little bit sad about it as well. What I am doing here, this whole endeavor of "redesigning" my process, is really just a way of me noticing that it is actually possible to enjoy the process of creating art from start to finish. It is possible (necessary even) to put fun and enjoyment FIRST, as a base to start from. Through fun it is possible to dive into those realms of difficulty, of "pushing through" in order to improve your abilities. These things are not opposed to enjoyment; the truth is the complete opposite. Fun is not an indicator of banality, of not taking yourself seriously—it is the base on which improvement and meaning and depth are built.
I keep realizing this with every one of these studies, and I am absolutely in awe of how easy it is again to pick up that brush and just start painting. It feels so great to thoroughly enjoy this immensely difficult process of learning how to paint better. It reminds me a lot of who I was back when I started to learn how to draw all those years ago. I absolutely love it.
Below are this weeks studies. All of them are sort of “proof of concept” studies so to speak with each on of them exploring different ideas of what I am trying to do. As I already mentioned, I do have a lot of technical things concerning these which I also would like to talk about but we’ll do that next time!
