Being Bold with Your Art

Thoughts on being bold with your creative practice, and how this is also an exercise which can help you to become more bold with other choices in your life.

I’ve learned a great deal about living a more healthy life from my art. My creative practice is perhaps my greatest teacher. Here’s one example:

To make great art you have to be fearless. Courage within the creative process is essential. I couldn’t count how many times I need to be brave and take chances while I’m making a painting. Why would I be afraid of taking chances with a painting? There is always that little voice in my head that asks, what if you screw it up? The thing is, if I don’t take the leap of faith and do what is necessary for the painting, it will be less than great and therefor “screwed up”. So, I must take the chance if I want the painting to succeed. 

Of course the rewards of bravery are not limited to making a painting. In the vast woods behind my home there is an extensive network of trails, so many that after a couple years I’m still finding new ones. Sometimes when I’m out there I may find myself in an unfamiliar place, and a subtle feeling arises in me. I realize that I’m feeling a mix of excitement for something new, and a fear of the unknown. A place deep in the woods that is completely foreign holds in its shadows dark parts of the psyche. 

At the fork in the trail I choose between the familiar or the unknown. Which path I choose will depend on my own condition. Will I be brave and take a chance or will I still with the known path?

Everyday we are faced with this choice between the familiar and unknown. See for yourself and observe throughout the day how many times you chose between the familiar and unknown. On the average day we do this constantly but are not consciously aware of it because it’s so automatic. We hesitate to order an unfamiliar dish at our favorite restaurant, hesitate to trust someone we have just met, and if you’re an artist, hesitate to take chances with the creative process.

Once everything and everyone in our lives was unknown. There is risk in every choice we make but with that risk there are also endless possibilities and outcomes. I have found that if I check my expectations and keep an open mind that failure isn’t an outcome, for what is failure but a chance to learn something new. And that’s the key. Learning and growing from our experience.

I won’t always succeed in making a great painting even with this approach of fearlessness but that’s okay, the real gain is not the painting itself anyway, it’s what happens in the studio while I’m painting it. The path is the destination.

More and more I find myself choosing the path of risk and exploration, whether in the studio or out in the woods. The joy of discovery far outweighs the disappointments of misadventure. Be bold and take a chance, you will be glad you did. 

The above painting is called The Mushroom Hunter. It’s a self portrait I painted in 2020 when I was spending a great deal of time out in the woods around my house hunting for mushrooms. Chanterelles to be exact. Anyway I wanted to add one last comment about being bold, it’s a funny saying amoung mushroom hunters that goes like this:

There are bold mushroom hunters and there are old mushroom hunters but there are no old and bold mushroom hunters.

So, maybe there are times when it does NOT pay to be bold. Just a thought.