Today I don't want to finish anything. Sometimes what is finished for me looks half done to someone else. If I have a moment of inspiration the afterglow is usually enough to get me through the hard parts, but sometimes finishing something is an act of shear will. My mother used to say I never finished anything. But when you are young living in your parent's house you have the time to explore options, and I found if one got boring you move on to the next one. I have to admit mom was a good sport about letting me paint a giant mural on my bedroom wall. She really was supportive about my artistic exploration in her own way.
Signing me up for an oil painting class when I was twelve was one of those supportive efforts that totally missed the mark. It was one of those classes where you gather at an art store and the instructor gives you your "kit" and then you all paint the exact same painting using special brushes that make trees look like trees and palette knives are used for adding "icing" on the mountains for snow. If mom only knew how so far off the mark she was she would have been embarrassed. But I love the fact that she wanted to support my creative gifts. Being a single mom with little financial resource it must have been a great sacrifice to put me in that class. So me and all the other students (all of them over 60) painted our cheesy mountain landscapes following the instructor's instruction and making trees look like trees and icing our mountains. I worked hard at making mine look just like the instructor's so my mom would be proud, and resisted the overwhelming urge to make my mountains purple. Pure torture. So my mom sacrificed in signing me up, paying for, and driving me to that class. I sacrificed by creating something that was not art so that she could be proud comparing mine to the other student's, ("yours really is the best one" she encouraged) and so that she could see me finish something.
One thing I do know in her accusation of not finishing anything is that I have mostly grown out of it. Seeing it as a character flaw most of my life caused me to work hard against it...
The unfortunate side effect is that I probably don't explore as much as I used to. My exploration is more calculated now. Artistic exploration in it's truest form cannot have a goal. So my greatest flaw was also my greatest quality. But I can't deny that those words ringing in my head also helped me when I felt my inspiration dwindling and there would be something great at the end if I just hung in there. This was also positively reinforced by my husband very early in our marriage. In college I had all the balls in the air, painting, ceramics, metalsmithing, etc. Taking a class in jewelry fabrication became my ultimate love.
There is a problem with having so many things that one wants to explore and having no money to do that. So, newly married my dear Bryan prompted me to choose. I had basic tools from my jewelry class but if I were to pursue it for real I needed to buy more. So spending one hundred and fifty dollars on a polishing machine was a huge investment especially when you consider that our rent was six hundred a month at that time. He made it clear that this needed to go somewhere.
Ten years later I had my jewelry in 32 galleries across North America.
I guess it really is good to finish something.
Of course now I am no longer doing that, and having the sense that I finished it(learned the craft, perfected my art, showed in the galleries, wine and cheese...blah blah) I have moved on to other things. Other art. Funny. maybe it is the duration of a thing that makes it "finished". I don't know. Or maybe how we measure success. Exploring art in it's various forms has been the one thing that drives me and gives me joy in life. And I think it is cool and ironic that the thing that I do now did not exist ten years ago. My new "brush" is a digital camera and a computer. Running a business and encouraging other artists in their exploration is where the road has taken me and where I stand at the moment. There are still days that I just want to play and not think about finishing anything. I do get a sick feeling when I don't finish something, like the residual, Clockwork Orange sense that I have done something wrong. But I think for the most part I have struck a balance. One need not be sacrificed for the other.
At age 75 my mother doesn't understand how I do my art now. The technology makes it hard for her to imagine what was once accomplished with a brush, but she is still proud. I only tell her about things that I've finished.
i spent 4 years in an art class in high school where the teacher, while very talented, wanted to make us into little carbon copies of him. it crushed every ounce of artistic inspiration i had. i have so longed to find my medium, experiment, have some fun at it again.
thanks for this post, it was encouraging. maybe i'll pick something up again when my kids get back to school. although, i'll probably never finish it either...
How funny, I took that same oil painting class in Huntington Beach, Ca at age 10 and my aunt now owns the ugly awful painting with iced mountains and fan-brushed trees. My mom also sacrificed to drive and pay for this adventure, but it unleashed me to be the artist I am today! I learned to love the process of art making more than the finished product (plus I'm addicted to the smell of oil paint and linseed oil). Great blog!