Start before you’re ready: a traveling artist field notes

Arrive to a new place near or far. Start your first sketch or painting immediately. Why? Because when you start before you’re ready, which in fact, because of how we’re socialised, we’ll never feel ready; but when you start anyways, it helps us get over the jitters and excitement of new, and the fear of messing it up, the fear of ugly or unacceptable works becomes less ‘scary’. And then our eyes, our critical self will all settle down and we will start to observe what is there more deeply, we’ll be more present and that’s where the term flow will generate from.

Afterwards, when we start our second painting and sketch, it will feel less gruesome, less intense to the touch, and more acceptable. We somehow become more generous with ourself. And the painting feels like the real you and less the you filled with society expectations and self consciousness.

My first sketch or plein air painting tends to feel self conscious, gross, full of trepidations and anxiousness that might include these thoughts: what will people think of it? People are looking at me, I hope I don’t disappoint them.”  Does that sound familiar?

The fact is, nobody cares that much about you, they see you, but their minds are elsewhere and that’s not something our self consciousness ever remember. Sometimes you get a curious and interested public, who comes over to look, and some ask for permission, some don’t. Some say ‘ that’s beautiful ‘ to you, as if you’re looking for validation and praise after they’ve seen it, and if we’re all honest, there is some truth to this. We are human afterall and sketching on location has a performative element because we are in public. Therefor let’s first admit that to some degree we want validation and praise from the random public that sees us. When we don’t get attention or validations, do I ever feel a bit dissapointed? Sure I do! And this is therefor the point of starting immediately. Be in your self conscious state and opportunities for the public to react or not, to you. And then you can almost observe your self consciousness in its state of joy or dissatisfaction or both, and you’ll move on from that state, eventually, we all do. And that flow state is where you want to be, that’s the state where you are so focused in your own creative work, you careless about being seen and being in public becomes just something you do because it’s fun.