"Under the Skylight", Oil, 12" x 12"

When I asked for and received a critique of my work last fall from a well-known artist, the process involved evaluating the work on my website and deleting all the bad paintings, with the idea that the bad paintings degrade the good paintings.  This process of elimination is necessary and good—one that I do all the time—but the idea of always thinking about my paintings in terms of "bad" and "good" is paralyzing and the proverbial killjoy of motivation.

On the other hand, posting daily paintings, however imperfect, in their own venue, can be highly motivating and an adventure in learning.  So is it better to take the risk of displaying a not-so-perfect painting and be highly motivated to wake up the next morning and try again, or to ruthlessly “burn” all the paintings that according to the painting gods should never see the light of day?  Well, it was a risk to ask for the critique in the first place, and having done that, I’ve decided that there’s no point in worrying about “what is on my gravestone,” as the other artist advised me to do.

So metaphorically, I’ve gone on the open road, a road many other artists have taken.  The concept of posting daily paintings is like a road trip with no advance reservations.  There is joy on the open road because it is about exploration, not having to get to the perfect painting.  I have some idea of where I’m starting, but no strict idea where I’ll end up or exactly what I’ll be doing along the way.  This is oddly motivating—makes me more serious about what I am doing, less fearful about results.

Gretchen Rubin, initiator of the Happiness Project, says “the things you do every day take on a certain beauty, and provide a kind of invisible architecture to daily life.”  And so far, I’ve found this to be true. So I'm taking the leap: my daily painting blog, with all its ups and downs, is the open road to a learning adventure.

http://www.kathryntownsend.blogspot.com