daring... to make bad art!

Mariska, 9 years old

Today I started following the 30 Day Journal Project from Lisa Sonora Beam. Just to get some other input, some other ideas to think and write about. Lisa sends prompts every day for 30 days long that you can use as a starting point. Often these are quotes. Today the starting quote was:

'all glory comes from daring to begin', Ruskin Bond

Lisa asked us to write with the help of this sentence: ' in order to begin....... (fill in an achievement), I had to dare to begin..... (fill in)'

There were many years, especially in my twenties, that I hardly made any art. Why was that? I had the urge to create, day after day,  to make, to feel a pen or a pencil in my hand. Like I've always had. 

I remember clearly that I sometimes sat down to try to make a drawing, but that most of the time I didn't try because I was afraid not to be able to make all the beautiful things, or at least one of them, that were in my head.

In fact I think that this is a very common fear, a fear that a lot of us have, artists or not. The fear not to 'succeed', whatever that success is defined like in a certain moment.

Were does it come from? I think that part of this fear comes from the all around judgement. We learn from very early on to divide the world in good and bad. Of course we have to learn the difference between safe and lifetreatening. The first thing is to survive. But we tend to expand this judgement to everything around and in us. Good girl, bad girl, good boy, bad boy, good art, bad art. 

In school we get grades for our drawings. Good drawing, not so good or bad drawing. And so making art is incorporated in our judgemental system. While most of the time art should and can serve totally other purposes (see this blogpost).

When I discovered that I drew and painted just because I loved it, I loved the scent of the paint, the feeling of the brushes, I loved everything about the process, something switched in me. There was absolutely no reason at all to make good art, beautiful art. It's was nice side effect when what I created was lovely or good. It was about the process, not the result. I just had that overwhelming urge to make, to make and to make more. When I created, I felt good, wonderful, in heaven, at home.

So I started to honour the proces. Trying to follow the urge, to honour it and to paint and draw whenever I could. I tried not to worry too much about the results. And the funny thing is, the more I drew, the more art I made, the more I made good stuff. Sometimes great and sometimes terrible. But I've learned to honour the very bad art also. It is an essential part of the process of making art and I love it just as much!

So dear Lisa, I would fill in my prompt like follows:

'In order to begin being an artist, I had to dare to begin making
 and loving BAD ART'