Are You a Workshop Junkie?By Ann Baldwin |
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| Are you one of those artists who is afraid of long periods (meaning weeks) alone in your studio? Do you sign up for every class which promises a new technique or a new approach? Do you suffer from a feeling of low self-esteem and nagging self-doubt when you haven't got a teacher to guide you? You just may be an Art Class Addict.
As an art teacher I have often come across those students who claim that they can produce nothing unless they are attending a class. The reasons they give range from: lack of room to paint at home (of course, this can be a very real problem); too many other temptations; a full-time job; too many children; bad lighting; no one at home to appreciate what they're trying to do; no will-power to complete anything without a deadline. Almost no one says: FEAR. Yet this is at the root of many a perpetual student's addiction to art classes. I know; I've been there. Nine years ago, when I picked up a paintbrush for the first time, my naïveté was such that my confidence knew no bounds. I had never taken an art class in my life, so I was amazed at how brilliant I was when I found that I could put down a blob that looked like a tree. I showed my childlike efforts to my husband and he, anxious to sustain my exuberance, praised me to the skies. After a year I realized I didn't know as much as I thought, and I signed up for a watercolor class at the local community college. It was two weeks before it struck me that everyone else was 'better' than me: they didn't have runs and blossoms all over their paintings which were clean and neat and looked like what they were supposed to. Being a mature adult, I was resistant to being told that I should clean up my act, but I did it anyway. Eight months and four classes later I'd improved so much that I was exhibiting my work in local shows. This made it even more necessary to take more classes. I'd never learned drawing or design or color theory, so I took lessons in all those. I started to win some awards, proving that tuition was paying off handsomely. Secretly I was getting bored with pure watercolor so I began introducing other media: pastels, ink, acrylics. This led to the need to attend other painting classes. The most affordable were the credit classes. I could hardly believe it, but I was on my way to a degree in Fine Art! Yet something was not right - at home I began to break all the rules; in class I started to get bored with all the tried and tested methods. By now I had converted my garage into a studio and I discovered that painting on the floor with my fingers was fun. Finally, I DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL! That's when I learned how hard it was to be alone in the studio. If things didn't go right there was no one to turn to for advice - except my husband, who is a scientist and at the time knew next to nothing about art. Or my friends, none of whom painted in the least like me and were at a loss how to respond to my requests for an honest critique. After a couple of days struggling with a seemingly insurmountable problem at my easel you would find me desperately browsing the Art aisle of Borders, leafing through books on any famous artist who had ever done anything remotely unusual and been praised for it. Marcel Duchamp is a real godsend in this situation! Now that I teach art I am sympathetic to those students who sign up for my classes again and again with an embarrassed apology. They are almost always talented, motivated people who thrive best in the small, supportive community of artists which constitutes an art class. They enjoy doing the homework as it gets them moving; they love the critiques so long as the criticism is constructive; and they do develop as individuals, finding their own styles. They are also enormously helpful to newcomers, making my job easier. But what of the perpetual art student whose artistic promiscuity knows no bounds? These addicts can fill their entire year with one workshop after another, all with different teachers, all focusing on different techniques, even different media. Uncertain of their achievements in watercolor, they sample oil painting, pastels, monoprinting, rubber-stamping, photo-transfers, even encaustic. Perhaps the next class or the next teacher will be the one to bring about their transformation, to uncover their special talents. Meanwhile they are learning to do many things with limited success, when they could be pushing themselves to do one thing well. They will often put forward the strong argument that to be really good artists they must have a wide variety of skills and ideas to draw on. True, but there is always a tendency to imitate a teacher whose art you particularly admire, even if you don't know you're doing it. (For several years I thought that black was a color used only by amateurs because my very talented artist/teacher said so!). The work which comes out of some teachers' workshops so closely resembles the teacher's own art that you can scarcely tell the difference - same colors, same subject-matter, same technique, even same size. I've seen this happen in my own workshops and I know how hard it is to avoid it, unless you are not going to divulge your methods at all - an attitude I deplore, since most students sign up hoping to find out the instructor's painting secrets. A teacher must make it clear right from the start that other ways of approaching the work are acceptable and make a point of praising individuality. There's only one way to kick the addiction to workshops and that is to go cold turkey. Force yourself into your studio facing a blank canvas or the equivalent and pick up that paintbrush. Tell yourself that it doesn't matter if the painting won't sell, doesn't fit your main body of work, won't be admired by your family and friends. You are exercising your painting muscles. One trick I often use is to have more than one canvas on the go at the same time. I tell myself that one of them is the 'real' painting, and the others are just 'fooling'. When the real painting hits a problem, I mess around on the ones that don't matter. 9 times out of 10 at least one of the 'not real' pieces turns out just fine. I have discovered that the act of painting feeds on itself. The more I paint, the more I want to paint, and the more ideas I have for other paintings. In a year alone in the studio I learn ten times as much as I ever learned in class. I discover what really motivates me. I have developed my own idiosyncratic style which is in none of the textbooks. (I used to worry about the fact that I often squeeze the paint directly onto the brush or poke the brush into the tube, rather than use a palette; or that I scrub the paint onto the canvas with the side of the brush, effectively destroying the bristles in a few hours.) I have learned to switch off the inner critic until the painting is nearing completion. I have almost learned not to ask my husband for his opinion! Art classes are important in the early stages when you need someone to tell you some basic truths about color, design, and art history. The occasional workshop to sample a new technique and meet new people may jumpstart the creative juices. But beyond that I'm convinced that the mature artist achieves his or her most significant development and greatest breakthroughs alone in the studio. That's when networking with other artists becomes your vital support system. Years ago I started a critique group which meets once a month just for that purpose. More of that next time... ©Ann Baldwin July 2000 |
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 Born in London, England, Ann Baldwin is an accomplished artist and educator, exhibiting both solo and at shows. She is active with the Marin County Watercolor Society, the Marin Society of Artists, the Marin Arts Council and Indian Valley Artists, Inc. Ann is also the founder of ArtMeet, a group of about 16 artists who meet once a month to show their paintings in one another's homes and conduct critiques (as well as eat delicious potluck dinners!).
Visit her site for more information at www.annsartpage.com. Ann is a contributing editor to WetCanvas! and can be reached via email at mailto:abaldwin@marinternet.com. |
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