HOT DAMN! A CHALLENGE!

There's virtually an absolute quid pro quo in making "good" paintings. If you paint from a place of confidence and easy trust in yourself your painting will speak with that voice. If you paint from a place of fear you will surely get what you fear most and want least. If you paint like you're afraid of looking foolish or like you don't know what you're doing you are actively affirming those thoughts throughout your painting sessions.

Your canvases might not yet speak with the directness and genius of a Braque, so compelling that even Picasso lifted from him; or the brio, clarity and depth of Sargent. But, neither will they be poorly dressed in pitiful marks that speak only of a painter's trepidation and fear of failure.

Conversely, if you paint with confidence and faith in your unique ability to say what only you can say your paintings will have, at the very least honesty and a strong voice. If you cannot yet paint - things, places, people, abstract ideas - in the way you wish - that's ok. You are not entitled to soar effortlessly the first time you spread your wings. Even an eagle is going to bust his tail-feathers the first few times it ventures to the edge of the nest. The choice you DO have control over is whether you find the learning process you must go through to be a delightful challenge or a curse. Treat your time practicing as if it were a scavenger hunt in the dark for jewels of new learning rather than a frustrating, self-defeating slog through a swamp of blind ignorance. Either way (and for as many years as you put brush to canvas!) you will often find yourself saying "I don't know what to do!" Then it's simply a matter of whether you say "Hot damn! A challenge!" or "What's wrong with me? I'm just no good." Either answer will display itself in your painting.

Pause for a moment now. Think of the harshness and shreddy appearance of deKooning's marks - he did that intentionally. Consider the shattered and scattered fragments of recognizable things and places in Hoffmann's Provincetown series - he consciously sought to make those floating, seemingly disjointed and simple statements. Consider the deceptively sparse thinness of a Gorky, the rough, tiled color stacking of Cezanne or the quaint flatness of Grandma Moses. One could make arguments against any of them from the position of an opposing era or school of work or simply personal preference. But those arguments could only stand on stylistic differences of opinion. No argument against those artists' clarity of intent or authority of statement can stand. If you paint with confidence and delight in your own desires it will show in your marks and strokes.

After a painting is finished you can debate, cogitate, grouse or grumble with yourself (and the many, many, MANY others who will freely, eagerly and aggressively critique your work!) about whether or not a particular painting is good or strong or properly composed, but those are debates that can last for centuries. Your time at the easel is limited. Let it be time spent with challenges eagerly met. Wrestle your demons with delight. Your paintings will be better for it.