I’ve decided to challenge myself to create one piece of bad art every day.
An exercise in the letting go of expectations of any final outcome.
An attempt to let go of perfectionism.
Perhaps a step closer to dethroning the ego, being comfortable with the knowledge that I will make shitty art sometimes.
Being okay with making shitty art sometimes.
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Reflections so far:
There is still a temptation to valuate the outcome with labels of good/bad. A tendency to get attached to a piece if I deem it good, naturally perhaps. Already a few are tacked to the wall but I wonder is there a way to limit this selection process as to bypass my critical perfectionist eye that gatekeeps which pieces are good enough to be displayed. This is perhaps the whole point of the exercise and so to allow myself to become attached to some over others is still upholding the view that I am a product of the good art I make, rather than a combination of the good and the bad. Will i want to curate which ones I show on the blog, or do I commit to saying that I show every single one? Or do I completely let go of this exhibitionist aspect of the project, and say that I show none?
I still experience a sinking disappointment when I step back to realise that the thing I painted is indeed very bad. As though I named the challenge Bad Art but actually was still hoping or perhaps expecting myself to produce something worthwhile under these loosened restrictions. Hoping for a triumphant realisation that once unshackled from expectations of perfectionism my inner artistic genius erupts onto the page. But the reality is, it really just has allowed me to make bad art and although this was my initial intention, my ego steps in to feel a sense of failure at that. So therefore, this process needs to be a celebration of these bad art pieces rather than a hope of training myself out of them.
Perhaps there is a hope that over the course of the 30 days my art with become less and less bad. So that by the end, I have become so free and loose with my artistic expression that I am no longer capable of bad. Is that what I’m secretly hoping for? But how can it get successively worse? Where normally practise=improvement, how can this process flip that assumption?
I havn’t yet decided if I want to restrict what materials/dimensions I can work with, but I quite like the idea of sticking to one medium as to really get a sense of change over time by controlling the other variables. But let’s see !
More to come…
TOAST 