When I was in elementary school my favorite class was Art. I felt most at home in that environment with the scratched up oversized desks marked with paint and ideas. Art classrooms are messy, colorful, and full of works in progress where people are trying to make something inside of them come to life.
Bringing an idea to life is the entire journey of an artist and it is full of obstacles. Skill level, access to resources, and knowledge are only a few things that can hold you back. The biggest obstacle for me has been managing expectations of capability. Turning ideas into reality is a long winding road we as artists are on. When I first read this quote several years ago, I understood the struggle. Naming something is the first step in overcoming whatever it is that’s holding you back.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
In the 4th grade I created this butterfly art. Looking at it now, it makes me so happy that I can see myself so clearly in here; the colors, what a butterfly represents, and the chaos of the splatter paint all over. I made a mistake and it really derailed me.
I was heavy handed in an area of purple splatter paint and tried to fix it and made it worse. I was devastated and thought my piece was ruined. My teacher told me “there’s no such thing as a mistake.” I’ve spent a lot of time worried about making mistakes and not executing my ideas perfectly, that it’s held me back and postponed a creative life for myself. I tend to have an all or nothing mindset about a lot of things and it’s a tough challenge to have in the studio.
Thinking back on what my teacher said, I feel like it’s bad advice, although of course well intentioned. I want mistakes to be acknowledged as disappointing. I wish the truth about mistakes and why they happen could be discussed honestly. I wish more light was shed on the beauty and lessons in mistakes. Only through mistakes have I learned new skills, how to troubleshoot, sharpen my mind, learn to plan better, become more resilient and grow my knowledge of everything related to a creative life.
It seems so obvious, but it can be tough to feel “not good enough” to execute your ideas. When in reality, why would I be good enough to bring all my visions to life without much experience. Even professionals don’t get it right all the time and are still failing. Mistakes are simply practice and we all know practice makes better. I think a lot of people struggle with mistakes because it’s not really their expectation to be perfect, but rather a crushing feeling that somehow a mistake says something about them and not the process. In the end my hope is that my ideas continue to feel important enough for me to keep making mistakes. Because it’s the ideas that represent you. They come from an authentic place that is worth valuing and continuing to strive for.
That perfectly imperfect butterfly hangs in my studio to remind me of the necessity of mistakes and my first spark of joy around art. It inspired me to create a new butterfly that carries the message of struggle I’ve had with this mindset and how far I’ve come from.
