Over the past 2 weeks, I have been slowly getting into the flow of this project. I was not feeling very motivated during the second week of this project and it’s been hard to recover from being sick and feeling unproductive. At the end of my third week, I was feeling behind and I hadn’t been to the art room at all that week. James was not thrilled by the lack of paintings that I had completed by this point. It was not fun to see his annoyance with me, but it did push me to start painting more. This experience made me reflect on what motivates me and why I sometimes need someone else to hold me accountable. James emphasized the importance of the process over the finished product. It’s been hard for me to shift to this mindset and way of working. I agree that I will learn more from producing more art even if it’s bad and there are many mistakes. I guess anything is better than nothing in this case.
On another note, my museum trips have been the highlight of my senior trip experience. This week I went to the Brooklyn Museum. I got to visit the Monet to Morisot exhibit: The Real and Imagined in European Art which features nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artworks from a collection by artists born in Europe or its colonies and focuses on a period of significant societal transformation, when artistic techniques, subject matter, and patronage underwent profound changes. There I got to see some of Pierre Bonnard’s work. I felt specifically called to his painting, “The Breakfast Room ” which depicts two people in a kitchen. The description described how Bonnard wanted to capture the experience of “what one sees when one enters a room all of a sudden”. He emulated that point of view by painting from memory and through a nostalgic lens, rather than working from what was right in front of him.
Artists and styles are covered in the Art book page 338 (Symbolism and Synthetism) – “a reaction against nineteenth-century preoccupation with materialism and technological change.” Bonnard was part of the Symbolist group – the Nabis & which included artists such as Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, and Felix Vallotton. The group’s name came from a Hebrew word for “prophet” and it referred to the artist’s enthusiasm for Gaugin’s expressive Synthesist style and the fervor with which he endorsed it. Bonnard is known for often portraying intimate domestic scenes and sought to accurately reflect the colors of the natural world. Bonnard often exaggerated and distorted color to express a sense of mood. Bonnard’s painting stuck out to me because there was a deeper meaning and motif to the kind of portraiture that he was capturing, which contrasted with the more common 19th-century portraiture that I was seeing.
My goals and aspirations have adjusted since the beginning of my project. Initially, I wanted to push myself to do a painting a day, but I just don’t work that way. I have tried to find more of a balance in setting a goal that is challenging but still realistic. I’m halfway through the project, but I feel like I just got into the flow and the other 3 weeks were like a warm-up. My goal for the following weeks is to go into the studio whenever I can; I didn’t recognize how helpful that would be for me. The idea of spending time outside of the building and painting from home was more appealing at the start of the project, but I’ve learned when I’m home I will fall into the bottomless pit that is procrastination.
Procrastination has become a theme during this whole experience, so I have decided to analyze why that is. I normally jump straight to the conclusion that the reason I procrastinate is that there is something wrong with me (either that or just simply blame it on my ADHD). Over the past week, I have spent hours listening to podcasts, watching youtube videos, and reading my book, “How to be an Imperfectionist” by Stephen Guise. Listening to David DuChemin’s “More Than Fun” podcast and watching Artist Varlie Lin’s youtube videos have been specifically helpful to me as I try to understand this habit. Stephen Guise and Varlie Lin both discuss the topic of perfectionism and why it is damaging to creative making. Perfectionism is such a limiting mindset yet many artists and creative people struggle with it. I think my procrastination for painting comes from a fear of failing. I don’t feel like a particularly experienced painter, and I’m starting to let go of the expectations of myself I had at the start of this project. The perfectionist inside of me is not concerned with what I’m learning, but more so about the polished result and the things that other people will see. Getting caught up in what others think and external validation has made it hard for me to let go of my perfectionism.
All three of these sources talk about creative struggle, and how to find a flow. David DuChemin questions the narrative that making art is supposed to be fun, yet it often creates stress for the person making it. He suggests that while there are moments when art-making is fun, people create art for so many different reasons yet it being fun is rarely one of them. I have never found art to be particularly fun. Coming up with ideas in my head or picking out the color pallet can be brief moments of fun, but the overall process of creating art honestly stresses me out. And as I write this I realize how kind of horrible that sounds, but even though the process does stress me out there is one thing that keeps me coming back to it. “The flow state” is a term that all three sources talk about. The flow state is pretty much exactly how it sounds. It’s a moment when you are focused on only one thing and all of your other thoughts are silenced because you are entirely consumed by that thing you are doing. It’s not easy for me to experience that level of focus, in anything, but I’ve found it in art.