In the end it's all dust
Or the curse of continuous improvement
Hello and welcome. This is a free newsletter for anyone interested in the workings of a creative life. My hope is that my sharing my journey will encourage others to make the art they can hear whispering their name in the night.
The draw back with practice is it leads to improvement. Which, in and of itself, is great. It does mean that you'll look at everything you did prior to your most current piece of work and weep at the ineptitude on show.
My wife recently decided she didn't like a blank wall over our dining table. She put up some picture shelves and then announced she wanted me to create some pictures to go on them.
She found some old pictures I'd shoved in a corner and put them on there. Now I'm sat desperately trying to create alternatives so I don't have to look at these pictures that cry failure. Two particularly irk me. Looking at them all I can see is the faults. They have no redeeming factors in my eyes. They are a waste of good paper.
And that is the problem with making art. The next piece is invariably better than the last and it's incredibly easy to focus on the failures, the ones you've overworked, the ones where the perspective screams, where you've not quite got the right shade, where the composition is dull. You always have a physical reminder of where you went wrong.
How you deal with this depends on the perspective from where you stand.
If you stand looking back from a judgemental position, all you may see is faults and failures. If you look with an optimistic eye, those mistakes become steps, steps to build on, learning experiences, inspiration to reach further next time. Perfection is out of the reach of all of us but better is always just in reach. All we have to do is stretch a little bit.
