Trusting Yourself In Your Art- Nancy Hillis MD

Trusting Yourself In Your Art

I’ve been thinking about one of the biggest challenges I see artists face. This was described succinctly by an artist in one my Artist’s Journey® courses: 

“I am finding ‘what to do next’ very challenging”

Have you ever felt that way?

As artists, we face this conundrum time and again as we set foot in our studios and begin painting.

Perhaps we start out with a feeling of joy and exhilaration…activating the canvas with unfettered self-expression, with no censoring, no strategic plan.

Trusting our gestural stream-of-consciousness mark-making…

Enjoying the process and feeling confident in our decisive marks.

Perhaps we begin to build layers in the back-and-forth, push-pull dance of asserting and obliterating our marks and paint passages.

What now?

Inevitably, there comes a point where we step back and ask ourselves: What now?

Sometimes, the painting emerges without much effort. It seems magical.

How did this happen?

Durchkomponiert

These are the paintings I call durchkomponiert (German for “through composed”…complete at every stage). This word is one of the reasons why Germans don’t play scrabble ; )

More commonly, the painting hits that rough spot, the middle of the painting, an experience sometimes akin to the dark night of the soul written about in great literature. This is the place where you feel lost, unsure, not knowing what to do next.

If you feel stuck in the middle of a painting, set it aside. Let it live for a while. Allow it to speak to you. It may or may not want to be taken further.

Stepping Into The Unknown

The crux of the matter is that, as artists, we are creators. We accept the condition of creating which is stepping into the mystery, the terra incognita, again and again.

We invite uncertainty and vulnerability every time we paint.

And yet we know that:

Ultimately, we’ve got to let go of the outcome and embrace not knowing because it’s in this place that the magic happens.

Yet we struggle.

A part of us holds on. We look for strategic solutions to make the painting “work”, we ask other artists for advice and receive a multitude of ideas for what to do next, yet none of them are our own.

We second guess.

We doubt ourselves.

We go back into our painting.

Perhaps we lick it the painting to death.

How do we face this dark night of the soul?

I believe that this is where trust comes in.

Trusting that searching and finding your way as you paint is the way, the journey to your deepest work.

Trusting that creating many starts and activating miles of canvas will lead you to your own lexicon, your own authentic self-expression in your art.

Trusting that cultivating an attitude of exploration and experimentation will lead to your most astonishing, surprising art.

Most importantly, allowing and embracing ugly paintings to emerge and knowing that these creations are extremely valuable in your development as an artist.

Indeed, 

Ugly paintings are often nascent, embryonic forms of new work being born. 

It’s time to get to the elusive, deepest art you came here to create

Becoming a great artist is about the movement of coming closer to who you are and reaching the fullest expression of You in your art. It’s about getting to the elusive, deepest art you came here to create. 

Much love from my studio to yours, 

Nancy

P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoying reading about my journey from Radiology to Psychiatry in my post: From Shadows To Nuance

P.S. Want to go deeper? Nab the Series: The Art of the Possible Books.