The Joy of Painting – Again! (and the Art of the Struggle)

Putting Down, Taking Away
Watercolor, Molly Larson Cook, 2024

April is National Poetry Month, and I am taking this time to say some things about the creative life in general, and about painting, music and poetry in particular.

Interestingly, they go well together. Poetry, music and painting. The poetry text I used when I taught at the University of Southern Maine had a center section of art with poems about them. There’s a name for this: ekphrastic poetry. There’s a name for almost everything!

And, of course, I always have jazz on my mind (and on my headphones) as I paint.

I’m not writing a poem today about anything at all, because one of the best poems for artists and other creative folks was written years ago by poet Naomi Shihab Nye. I was fortunate enough to study poetry for a week one summer in the Wallowa mountains of Eastern Oregon with Naomi. It was a life-changing experience. And she has that way about her. She was a featured poet on the Bill Moyers poetry series , and he said of this poem that it changed his life. So, here she is and it is, and they might very well change yours.

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone is telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)

———————-

My choice these days is to work on my watercolors, to become a student again, and learn something new. I just had a birthday, a big one, and in some books it would be time for me to just sit back and wait for whatever comes. If I were a different kind of person, that might work, but I am not and it won’t.

Those who seem to know claim that watercolor is the most challenging medium for an artist. I’ve already written a little about this. And I certainly agree. But what they don’t always tell us is that it can also be, like many other best challenges, a most magical and surprising medium. And fun!

Now that I have more time to explore, I also have a few new thoughts about this art game, thoughts that came to me from my love of jazz and my desire to be a better artist. Since I’m on a course of self-education about watercolor, I keep coming across advice in one paragraph or another that with watercolor, it’s important to “break the rules.”

Shoot, that part’s easy. I’ve been a rebel for years, so breaking the rules is not new to me. But breaking the rules in my art certainly is. I’m a rebel about a lot of things – don’t get me started – but when it comes to watercolor, I’m also a beginner, so instead of just plunging forward, I’m working slowly, paying attention to what I’m reading and seeing and trying out each and every exercise I come across.

And herein lies a different problem. You can’t just read about something and believe you know how to do it.

Case in point: years ago I knew an engineer who worked on serious nuclear projects. He was book and engineering smart! But not so much about some other things. We lived near a big river where people had nice little boats and sailed all the time. My friend thought he might want to try that, so he read everything he got his hands on about sailing. One sunny afternoon he watched a couple of teen-age boys sailing on the river, hailed them, and asked if he could give it a try. He mentioned all his reading and, although they were a bit skeptical, this was a grown-up engineer, so why not? He took the sailboat out by himself and, within 15 minutes, sunk it while the boys stood on shore stunned and amazed, not at all amused, as they learned first hand a basic rule:.

Reading how to do things is not doing them.

I feel as if I’m back in genuine art school again, and that my education is just beginning as I try my hand at watercolor. Not that what I learned before, especially at Maine College of Art and workshops along the way don’t matter. They do. But this is more formal education on my own. Finding my voice, so to speak. Breaking rules.

It’s a more rigorous education in a way I can’t describe. Yet. I am a born teacher and my biggest project ever is this one, right now – teaching myself to be a watercolor artist.

Oddly, I came across this very lesson in an entirely different place last week. I found it on the jazz education site I subscribe to. Here’s a key bit from the article…

A jazz student was questioning his/her ability to learn to improvise well (which is a lot like abstract art) and wrote:

• I have a ton of resources (books, solos, masterclasses), yet for some reason I’m still not improving!
• I’m practicing scales and exercises but they aren’t translating into musical ideas in my solos.
• Why do I still have trouble hearing & memorizing tunes even though the sheet music is right in front of me?
• Why aren’t the transcribed solos I’m learning and analyzing not improving my ability to play tunes?

It makes you wonder…is this flood of easy information, all this reading and learning, actually a good thing?

And more importantly, is information alone really the secret to reaching your goals as a musician?? Or an artist??

And then I read this: “…the information itself isn’t the problem. The key to improving goes back to one important aspect of the way you’re learning this music” (or painting technique).

The problem the authors write is that we’re overlooking “The Struggle Effect.” And the Struggle Effect is the essential piece of the learning puzzle: the process of discovery.

Information is not the essential thing when it comes to an art form like musical improvisation or abstract art. Learning all the basics is an important part of the process, but they are not what will improve your work – music or art. What will improve your playing or your painting is the journey to find them.

Think of every hero or quest story you’ve ever heard. The hero does not go out on the quest and have someone magically hand him the prize. Nope, nope, nope. The hero has to work for it, to struggle. And it always takes time.

In other words, your own process for learning is more important than any one of the things you are learning. You can have all the right tools, the right studio, the right easel, all of it, but they won’t make your art any better. The process is the way.

And the process is the Struggle Effect which

–allows for mistakes.

–helps develop real world skills.

–helps you learn to be adaptable and a problem solver.

–shapes your artistic identity.

And as artist, teacher and writer Robert Henri sums it up so well in his fine book, The Art Spirit:

“A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.”

I could not have said it better myself.