Nov. 21st Studio Notes: You have to be willing to risk ruining everything for your work to be great.

I only made one small painting this week.

Honestly, it didn’t feel like much at first. Just a little blocky collage experiment I started because I wanted to keep my hands moving and relax with my art. But the funny thing is that this small piece in my sketchbook reminded me of something important that not only applies to art, but to life in general.

It started off fine. Not great. Just fine. It was the kind of composition that felt safe enough to leave alone and say, “It’s done.” I’ve made plenty of those. We all have boxes full of “good” art that never made it any further because we were afraid to mess it up. But, for me, this art is stored in a box in the dark. Most will never actually see the light of day, even though they’re “good”.

At one point, I could feel myself freezing up a bit as usual, trying to protect what was already there. I even walked away for a while and considered the piece finished. But “good” wasn’t what I actually wanted.

So I stopped thinking and just started moving again.

I grabbed the scissors, cut a few pieces without a plan, and started gluing them down before I could talk myself out of it. I let instinct take over for a few minutes. No overthinking. No careful strategy. Just forward motion.

That’s when the whole thing came together. It shifted from something predictable and average to something that actually felt better and more alive. And it reminded me how much harder it is to push a piece forward when it already looks “good.”

You have to be willing to risk ruining everything for your work to be great.

That’s the uncomfortable place where the best work usually happens. But it’s hard to move it forward. It almost creates stress, and that goes against everything we’re trying to do with our art practice. But a little stress, a little fear might be exactly what we need to create our best work. No different than a professional athlete who loves the game, but they have this pressure to perform at the highest level.

We too need to face that fear and take the next step.

Hopefully, when we do this on a regular basis, it will become easier and the work will elevate beyond just “good” and become great more often.

Some works will fail, and we should be prepared and “ok” with this inevitability. It’s part of the process and something we need to learn to be at peace with. When we do, then it becomes easier to do it the next time. The worst outcome, where you feel a piece has failed, isn’t any different than the average work that was there already. It’s just going to end up in a box with all the rest. So why not push it forward?

This week wasn’t flashy. But it moved me forward again. And that’s the whole point.