Pandemic Poetry & Art Healing Project

We All Dance

This piece was a demonstration to my students on how to recognize expression and creativity while they are making. The colors, lines and abstractions in the dress were all unintentional, very quick, with no real plan. That took about 30 mins. The learning goal for students was to understand that the random/chance visual effects that happen as a result of the "feelings at that moment" can affect decisions and movements. During these "moments" the mind is constantly trying to solve the unknown. It is the sparks and ideas that happen while you are working that is the creativity. For some that is their first understanding of what it means to be creative. After this first action of painting the background with only random choices and "allowing the flow of emotions" to guide their movements with the line qualities. they were instructed to find something within the elements and develop it. For me, that was the bare dancing feet of a gypsy. It takes a gypsy soul to freely dance no matter where you are or what is going on. Once I had my feet drawn I spent about 2 hours with oil pastels developing the feet. The goal for students then was to recognize when to stop or not over working or having it look "too realistic".
Now about Perfectionism! I AM A PERFECTIONIST! The biggest battle of my own artistic practice has been finding a balance between allowing for my unique mark making and my desire to record perfectly realistic my subjects. Once I accomplished the highly realistic with precise details, l purposely moved into expression with skill. Until I was satisfied that I could do highly realistic, I could not make myself be OK with what happens in just a moment of spontaneous making. Now it gives me the greatest joy to know I can "play around" with color, marks, shapes, etc and then find one thing that can be developed a bit further into a more solid form. Students struggle equally with the expectation that everything should look real to be good work. I spend a great deal of time encouraging and soothing anxieties with students that have to be guided into expression. They often can not see the "expressive qualities" for looking critically at their perceived mistakes. This is a huge hurdle in getting them to recognize and embrace their own styles and creative processes. I have the balance now and have "satisfied" those standards for realism. I no longer desire or plan for any work that will take me weeks to finish. I get bored with works that require a lot of high realism these days. Severely abstracted works do not appeal to me either on the other side of that position. I need my forms to be solid but not of this world. Teaching my students these concepts takes time and patience because it is so psychological.