The 2-hour masterpiece
A friend recently invited me to go with her to one of those drink-wine-while-you-paint events. I’ve never been, but have always been wildly impressed by the pictures of amazing art my friends have produced even if they’re not the sort who typically create art.
While the event was a total delight – the artistic host was witty and encouraging and my friend and I floundered and laughed and created together – the real treat was something I learned that started helping me almost immediately after the session was done.
We were creating a take on Van Gogh’s Starry Night called Starry Night Lake View. Being two high-achieving women, you can imagine the pressure to perform and the desire to create something stunning that we both felt as we sat down with our brushes and palates of paint.
Our host was obviously used to guiding artists and non-artists alike through the process and reminded us early on that we’d have less than 2 hours to paint our creations, so we couldn’t get precious about our work. He gave clear, fast instructions and we were off and running.
This interesting time constraint and the invitation to just PAINT and not think about it created exactly the conditions I needed to actually make this thing happened. If someone had showed me the model picture (which was up the whole time for us all to see) and told me to create it, it would have taken me days (weeks? months??) of misery and hair-pulling. Instead, I followed his instructions, focusing on keeping up with his pace and getting it mostly right, instead of on creating perfect lines or perfect blending.
And in the end, I had a picture I loved. It didn’t look “just like the model” (and by the way, neither did the instructor’s) but I still loved how it looked and I had a great time doing it. Again, if I had been left to my own devices, I would have fretted over it forever and felt wildly disappointed in the end result for not looking just like the model.
But having the dual-mindset of getting it done and having fun meant that at the end of two hours, I had a fully completed, lovely picture and a great experience getting there.
In my work, I have been struggling for far too long with trying to articulate succinctly and creatively what exactly my specific, unique work is, and after an afternoon of just do this thing and don’t think about it so hard, and a pivotal conversation with my friend, I went home and knocked out content in about 15 minutes that I’ve been trying to write for months.
Sometimes the most unexpected experiences end up being turning points for something totally unrelated in our lives. Being open to translating an experience in one arena to a different arena can be that super sweet spark that shakes us out of stuckness.
A million thanks to my brilliant, artistic, creative friend who invited me on this adventure and inadvertently helped me move forward after months of stagnation!!
The inspiration…
The results…
