What do you do when you realize nothing is working? It’s really easy to want to throw in the towel and even go as far as to imagine that everything is crumbling around you. Even if things are good somehow you probably can find the bad in it. After all you have become something of an expert at rejection so you are pretty sure you can spot it when it’s right in front of your face.
The most ironic thing is my social science background is not what is helping me anymore. It’s that art minor that has been giving me some perspective. When you are an art student they always tell you to step back. When you are close up, you can’t always see if something is leaning to one side, or if the shading might be slightly off. When you are close up, you can’t always see the full picture, and art is not about one part of a piece, it’s about the entire work. So that is how my life is right now, I’m so close up that no matter what I look at, all I see are imperfections, errors, gaps, things that can be improved. I can’t seem to step back and see the full picture.
So what do artists do when they are so consumed with their work that it begins to destroy them? Well, some go insane, cut their ear off, and think it will encourage their love that they are a good decision. While others decide it’s time to start a different painting. It’s said that it took 4 years to “create” the Mona Lisa. One painting 4 years? Research shows that there are layers and layers of Ms.Lisa, until the ultimate “finished” piece we see today in text books, on the internet even in commercials.
We are all “works in progress” some are just a little more “rough” than others. The hardest thing to come to grips with is to pace yourself and step back. If you can’t see the final product in your head, how can you finish what you cannot envision? I’m not sure there are many people that you can ask, “are you where you wanted to be at this point in your life,” that would actually say yes. Of course I wouldn’t ask Oprah or Tyra Banks that though… I’m not saying you can never create your “perfect” picture, what I’m saying is don’t put a date on it. Amazing artwork is not created in a day, it takes time, it takes vision and it takes persistence. Don’t give up, because after all if Leonardo Di Vinci hadn’t created that smirking smile, would people still be talking about this portrait today?
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