Several years ago, when I was lucky to be awarded a year of mentorship with Graeme Willson, he set me a task of experimenting with abstraction. I found the experience mystifying in some respects, and I recall that my efforts were really rather timid. Looking at my work he said that he thought that I was “frightened to fail”. I was able to operate confidently and with a reasonable degree of skill within the territory I had mapped out for myself, but lacked the confidence to go out on a limb and try something completely different.
His words came into my head today. Ideas have begun to crystallise around a new project, and I am aware that I am prodding it around the edges, rather tentatively. If I lack commitment I suppose that this is understandable, in the light of the relatively long lay-off I have had from painting over the past few months. Also, I am aware that I can’t actually make a start properly until I get over to the art shop in Ilkley on Thursday. Even so, I know that my initial engagement with the ideas lacks conviction at the moment.
This is not a general characteristic of my approach to things. I enjoyed my weekly climbing session today, and pushed the boat out a bit, leading a grade at which I would have been rather cautious in the past. (I’m absolutely shattered now!) So I will take risks there, and I’m not inhibited by the possibility of falling off, or by the prospect of making an idiot of myself if I can’t actually doing a move. Normally, when I’m climbing I do climb until the point at which I fail. Art is, for some reason, different.
Looking back over the years since I took up art on a serious basis I know at one level that I have done this kind of thing before. I can do it! This does not mean, however, that I’m not going to need to psych myself up in the coming weeks, to the point at which I actually make a commitment to the task. “Feel the fear,” as they say, “and do it anyway.”