Learning to patiently learn

So here’s a thing I never thought would happen: I got tired of thinking about art today. I know! You probably never thought it would happen either! Everyone here is just shocked! But mostly I’m too tired to be very shocked. I feel like my brain might be leaking outta my ears. The work schedule around here lately is serious business.

Life comes at you pretty fast

I’m really enjoying this 100 paintings class and I feel like it’s pushing me in some really good ways. I’m not only making art that’s different from what I normally make, but I’m also thinking more critically about it. Critical here means that I’m assessing it based on the assignments not that I’m being critical, as in thinking that it’s crap. (Although sometimes it is crap.)

I’m doing a lot of work very quickly. More quickly than I think I may have ever made art. Luckily, the pieces don’t have to be finished, I just have to be done enough with them to consider them having met the assignment criteria. Ten pieces week is a lot. During eclipse week we traveled over the weekend and I barely got that week’s work done. And this week I got it done just under the wire after having started the assignment twice because I felt like the first round wasn’t working. 

So today while I was trying to look at my work and consider the assignment criteria and assess it, I realized that my brain was mushy. I couldn’t even string a sentence together. I kept looking at the my work and trying to come up with words and it was as if my brain was a radio tuned to static. So I stopped. I turned in the work that I had with minimal analysis and I called it a day.

Those sneaky little epiphanies

As I listened to my fellow classmates talk about their work this week in the zoom classroom, I heard several of them say they were worried about doing the lessons “wrong” and my overachiever heart ached. How often have I cut myself off from good and useful instruction because I was more worried about being wrong than about learning from the lessons as they were presented and my mistakes along the way?

This follows hard on the heels of something that I articulated for myself over the weekend: I don’t want to spend my life just getting through things. I love my to-do list. It keeps me sane. But also? It generates a lot of “get it done” mentality. Even if what I am “getting done” is something pleasurable or something I am supremely lucky to get to do. I tend cross it off the list and put it behind me.

I want to savor more and I think this is where my word of the year “slow” is really getting to me. Slow down. Savor what is happening. Try to catch this moment, hold it in my mind, and enjoy it. Look for the silly and the sublime. And I can’t do that if I’m busy checking boxes.

My sister-in-law and I made up a saying for our kids when they were little because they were often resistant to school lessons that were challenging in any way: Hard is where you learn. You’d think that after as many times as I said it to them, I’d have taken it onboard. But I’m just as resistant to challenging material as they were and are. I guess that’s a life-long learning process for all of us.

New week, new lesson

And while I’ve been writing and pondering this post, a new lesson from my class has rolled out. I think this lesson is one I can do slightly easier. But who knows? When I get into the thick of it, I might start stressing out and rethinking everything. Again.

I took yesterday evening off and just spent my time sitting on the couch. It was a very small break as breaks go but a much needed one.

I’m looking forward to diving into this week’s lesson though with these new thoughts circling my head like Woodstock around Snoopy. Also I’m looking forward to the making. I’m looking forward to thinking about art.

Where are you expanding and growing in your practice? What are you realizing or learning? Catch up with me on socials, email me, or go old school and leave a comment on this post to be immortalized for all of time.

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