Viewpoint (July
2000 )
Are You A Workshop Junkie?
Are you one of
those artists who is afraid of long periods (meaning weeks) alone in your
studio? Do you sign up for every class which promises a new technique or a
new approach? Do you suffer from a feeling of low self-esteem and nagging
self-doubt when you haven't got a teacher to guide you? You just may be an
Art Class Addict.
As an art teacher I have often come across those students who
claim that they can produce nothing unless they are attending a class. The
reasons they give range from: lack of room to paint at home (of course, this can
be a very real problem); too many other temptations; a full-time job; too many
children; bad lighting; no one at home to appreciate what they're trying to do;
no will-power to complete anything without a deadline. Almost no one says: FEAR.
Yet this is at the root of many a perpetual student's addiction to art classes.
I know; I've been there.
Nine years ago, when I picked up a paintbrush for the first
time, my naïveté was such that my confidence knew no bounds. I had never taken
an art class in my life, so I was amazed at how brilliant I was when I found
that I could put down a blob that looked like a tree. I showed my childlike
efforts to my husband and he, anxious to sustain my exuberance, praised me to
the skies. After a year I realized I didn't know as much as I thought, and I
signed up for a watercolor class at the local community college. It was two
weeks before it struck me that everyone else was 'better' than me: they didn't
have runs and blossoms all over their paintings which were clean and neat and
looked like what they were supposed to. Being a mature adult, I was
resistant to being told that I should clean up my act, but I did it
anyway.
Eight months and four classes later I'd improved so much that
I was exhibiting my work in local shows. This made it even more necessary to
take more classes. I'd never learned drawing or design or color theory, so I
took lessons in all those. I started to win some awards, proving that tuition
was paying off handsomely. Secretly I was getting bored with pure watercolor so
I began introducing other media: pastels, ink, acrylics. This led to the need to
attend other painting classes. The most affordable were the credit classes. I
could hardly believe it, but I was on my way to a degree in Fine Art!
Yet something was not right - at home I began to break all
the rules; in class I started to get bored with all the tried and tested
methods. By now I had converted my garage into a studio and I discovered that
painting on the floor with my fingers was fun. Finally, I DROPPED OUT OF
SCHOOL!
That's when I learned how hard it was to be alone in the
studio. If things didn't go right there was no one to turn to for advice -
except my husband, who is a scientist and at the time knew next to nothing about
art. Or my friends, none of whom painted in the least like me and were at a loss
how to respond to my requests for an honest critique. After a couple of days
struggling with a seemingly insurmountable problem at my easel you would find me
desperately browsing the Art aisle of Borders, leafing through books on any
famous artist who had ever done anything remotely unusual and been praised for
it. Marcel Duchamp is a real godsend in this situation!
Now that I teach art I am sympathetic to those students who
sign up for my classes again and again with an embarrassed apology. They are
almost always talented, motivated people who thrive best in the small,
supportive community of artists which constitutes an art class. They enjoy doing
the homework as it gets them moving; they love the critiques so long as the
criticism is constructive; and they do develop as individuals, finding their own
styles. They are also enormously helpful to newcomers, making my job easier.
But what of the perpetual art student whose artistic
promiscuity knows no bounds? These addicts can fill their entire year with one
workshop after another, all with different teachers, all focusing on different
techniques, even different media. Uncertain of their achievements in
watercolor, they sample oil painting, pastels, monoprinting, rubber-stamping,
photo-transfers, even encaustic. Perhaps the next class or the next teacher will
be the one to bring about their transformation, to uncover their special
talents. Meanwhile they are learning to do many things with limited success,
when they could be pushing themselves to do one thing well. They will often put
forward the strong argument that to be really good artists they must have a wide
variety of skills and ideas to draw on. True, but there is always a tendency to
imitate a teacher whose art you particularly admire, even if you don't know
you're doing it. (For several years I thought that black was a color used only
by amateurs because my very talented artist/teacher said
so!).
The work which comes out of some teachers' workshops so
closely resembles the teacher's own art that you can scarcely tell the
difference - same colors, same subject-matter, same technique, even same
size. I've seen this happen in my own workshops and I know how hard it is
to avoid it, unless you are not going to divulge your methods at all - an attitude
I deplore, since most students sign up hoping to find out the instructor's
painting secrets. A teacher must make it clear right from the start that other
ways of approaching the work are acceptable and make a point of praising
individuality.
There's only one way to kick the addiction to workshops and
that is to go cold turkey. Force yourself into your studio facing a blank canvas
or the equivalent and pick up that paintbrush. Tell yourself that it doesn't
matter if the painting won't sell, doesn't fit your main body of work, won't be
admired by your family and friends. You are exercising your painting muscles.
One trick I often use is to have more than one canvas on the go at the same
time. I tell myself that one of them is the 'real' painting, and the others are
just 'fooling'. When the real painting hits a problem, I mess around on the ones
that don't matter. 9 times out of 10 at least one of the 'not real' pieces turns
out just fine.
I have discovered that the act of painting feeds on itself.
The more I paint, the more I want to paint, and the more ideas I have for other
paintings. In a year alone in the studio I learn ten times as much as I ever
learned in class. I discover what really motivates me. I have developed my own
idiosyncratic style which is in none of the textbooks. (I used to worry about
the fact that I often squeeze the paint directly onto the brush or poke the
brush into the tube, rather than use a palette; or that I scrub the paint onto
the canvas with the side of the brush, effectively destroying the bristles in a
few hours.) I have learned to switch off the inner critic until the painting is
nearing completion. I have almost learned not to ask my husband for his opinion!
Art classes are important in the early stages when you need
someone to tell you some basic truths about color, design, and art history. The
occasional workshop to sample a new technique and meet new people may jumpstart
the creative juices. But beyond that I'm convinced that the mature artist
achieves his or her most significant development and greatest
breakthroughs alone in the studio. That's when networking with other
artists becomes your vital support system. Years ago I started a critique group
which meets once a month just for that purpose. More of that next
time..... ©Ann Baldwin July 2000