Thoughts From Marsha

Here is a quote from a newsletter I was reading this morning. The author is Winston and his newsletter is called "Coffee Times." It doesn't matter what he was talking about, because I could relate this to my teaching students how to be an artist.

"The solution to the question is straightforward if you don’t complicate it. But it highlights that many adults tend to overthink and unnecessarily complicate any given problem. Many problems in life are self-created, and solving them won’t necessarily solve the real problem at hand. Yet we get so preoccupied with solving unnecessary problems that we neglect the real problem, which could have been solved easily if we had focused on it.

What do you think?"

As an artist and teacher I see things in my art, and in my students' art, that might need a bit of tweaking.

And personally, our lives all have daily problems that need solving and the above quote can be applied to those as well. Wow!

Don't overthink!

What a concept. As an artist we hear our mentors, teachers and peers say all the time: "simplify."  For years, I have internalized a thought about that idea of simplify... "it does not work for me." Well, it would if I worked at it the correct way.

Teaching helps me learn so much more, and I cannot take credit for this. I know it came from someone teaching me. I learned a technique that I teach my students. I have to remind myself to do the same.

Boil things down to the idea of "what needs to be done next." Stay with me here! You (and I) need to stick with just that one question, one more time: "what needs to be done next." The question is not: "what few things do I need to do?"

And, as the quote above says, "... don't complicate it!" Most of us think of what needs to be done as a series of changes. I tell students all the time ... "Just think of one thing. What is the most important? Make the first correction and do not under any circumstances make the second one you had in mind."

Do you know why?

That second correction might not be needed after you make the first correction! Did I confuse you?

In painting, each time you make a mark on your canvas or paper, you change the relationship of everything that is around your "new" mark. I tell the student to back up a respectable distance of about five feet and take a look at what was just changed. Then you can decide if another mark is needed. If so, you walk back up to the easel and make that next mark. Repeat this same process until you walk five feet away and tell yourself "no new mark will make it perceptibly better!"

That one mark, or that one correction, changes everything around it. You will have a new idea "after" that correction or change. Possibly! And... you might not!

What a concept, right?

In our lives outside of art, we make decisions all the time. Some of those decisions should not have been made until there is a new look at what is going on that we made a decision about. Look at it with fresh eyes.

In my art, I talk about "fresh eyes." It means a space of time not looking at what I have been doing. Giving it a break and coming back with fresh eyes is coming back to it with a new perspective... that time in between give us time to do this. We can then be gentle on ourselves and on the problem we are solving.

Making changes in our lives is a happening that shows up quite often. Working on a piece of artwork requires decisions that could be a change from our normal process.

Learn to work at changes one step at a time. Reevaluate the problem. Make a new decision ... which could be another change or "it is done!"

The painting you see at the top is from the past. It was one I made changes to by brushing out a portion and then stepping away and evaluating what I might want on another day.