Curing Perfectionism (Part One)
We all have a little voice in our head that plants seeds of self-doubt. Everyone is familiar with that constant battle between our desires and the inner critic who tries to create chaos by stirring up negativity with decision-making. As artists, that voice can be its loudest when we’re struggling with work in the studio and the fear created in that environment leads to a side effect known as perfectionism.
On its face, art and perfectionism seem like an odd couple. Mistakes can be rebranded as innovation or simply painted over. If engineers and surgeons are on one end of the perfect spectrum, artists would certainly fall on the other. A real bridge can’t be abstract, but one in a painting can be.
And yet, artists are just as susceptible to the demands of perfectionism as anyone else. The cliched image of the quirky painter covered head-to-toe in paint in a messy studio obscures the reality that creating is often a lonely pursuit where the only sounding board is in your head. Trying to quiet that voice alone lends itself to perfectionism, which can stifle any well-intentioned idea.
Here are tips to stave off perfectionism in your practice:
1. Avoid The Explore Page
When you’re looking at art on a social media explore page, you are viewing a selection of artists’ best work all curated together. If you are in the right headspace to experience this content, it can be really exciting and inspiring to scan this page. But the other side of the coin is that it is overwhelming.
We all understand by now that social media provides an incomplete picture of a person’s life, usually just a polished snapshot, but when you’re confronted by a sea of beautiful artwork on your phone it’s easy to believe that your own work is comparatively lacking. Especially if I haven’t already painted in a day, viewing the explore page is something I’ve found to be detrimental to my mindset in the studio. A successful painting for me comes when I’m fully committed to the process, and it’s harder to go on that journey when social media is feeding you only results.
So, I avoid the explore page as much as I can and I keep it totally separate from my art-making process.
2. Redefine Success
It’s important to have an ongoing conversation with yourself about what success for you looks like.
When you see an established artist achieving success through exhibits and sales, it is easy to determine that anything less than those achievements is failure. There’s an obsession in the art world about defining what makes a “real” artist, with the suggestion being that simply creating art doesn’t make someone an artist. Instead, the title can only be bestowed upon you by sophisticated tastemakers who hold all the power. I think all that is complete BS.
In my experience, my art has benefited the most when I set the standards for success instead of allowing external forces to decide for me. When I first started my career, I made a new painting everyday for two years. After awhile I realized I was only continuing with this pursuit because I felt that that was what was expected from me. But when I stopped forcing myself to finish a painting everyday, I had time for larger work that really expanded my ability to say what I wanted in my art. By changing my definition of success from a completed painting to a focus on process, I had way more time to create concepts that were previously off limits to me.
3. Build Trust With Yourself
If you’re used to operating out of a desire to please others (aka external factors), it can be really hard to hold yourself accountable when you are the only person being impacted. When I started making one piece of art a day back in 2016, the primary function of my Instagram account was to hold myself accountable to keep going. Completing the one year of creating everyday (which turned into two lol) showed me that I was capable of fulfilling a promise to myself, even without the guarantee of a reward.
If you are a perfectionist, you’re probably used to pushing yourself to complete a project, but if you can’t motivate yourself virtually any task can feel impossible. If the only person holding you accountable to your art practice is you, understand that it will at times be difficult to motivate yourself. My advice is to start with small, achievable goals that build a foundation for trusting yourself.
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Stay tuned for Part II of this blog coming next Friday!