When I was at Art School we had a Life Drawing tutor who would make your back prickle walking behind you as he roamed the room. The classroom was deadly silent – just the scratching of conte on paper, squeaking of easels, the occasional long sigh and the shuffling of Scarey Guy on the prowl. Occasionally he would stop and instruct – dread and fear would scramble your brain as you tried to decipher what he was trying to say and respond appropriately. He had a few missing teeth and scruffy beard and a habit of constantly stroking it as he spoke. It seemed that a lot of his words left his mouth as whistles or were corrupted by his stroking fingers leaving you to somehow decode his mumbles. He was impatient and would get frustrated if you said the wrong thing, which was often as the decoding wasn’t always on point.
Detail of ‘10 Green Bottles”
We drew in fear, back prickling, avoiding eye contact trying desperately to produce a dynamic, proportionally accurate drawing while remaining invisible. I didn’t look forward to his classes and hand on heart I don’t remember learning anything from him. The weekly practice was my teacher.
I had other tutors who were less intimidating, more like humans really. They would hand out an assignment, give instructions and then on the due date they would reconnect and receive the finished work. They’d assess it and give you back your grade. I learnt about as much from them as from Scarey Guy, although granted it was more comfortable.
When I was at Teachers College I had a wonderful tutor who delivered content with a smile. She dressed fabulously, had beautiful big arty jewellery, she invited us to her home and shared her experiences of teaching and life with us. She broke everything down to manageable chunks so that we could apply the learning. We created teaching units with enthusiasm and strode into our first teaching practices with confidence. By the end of the year I had learnt more about Art from her than I had done in my 3 years at Art School.
She was a great model and very present in my mind as I embarked on my first teaching job, attempting to dress with flair and accessorize with oversized jewellery. I never quite pulled it off finally resorting to wearing colourful scarves in my hair as a nod to Style.
However, I loved teaching. She had equipped me well and soon I too had a devoted following. Students would turn up to do extra Art in the weekends, they’d drag me onto the dancefloor at school discos (well, I was young then..) and when it was my turn for lunch duty a little gang would follow me round and offer silent support when I inadvertently came across a rebellious smoker. I loved my gang.
Recently, I’ve been watching the America’s Cup. The racing is exciting and my darling man and I have tuned into a few press conferences given after the races. I’m afraid our guy Pete Burling although clearly a talented sailor, is not a gifted speaker. Laconic grunts delivered with the best intent and his mind on the next windshift. His rival though – a steely eyed Aussie called Jimmy Spithall has a lot more to say and the ability to compress a good deal of meaning into just a few well chosen words. Mid-regatta when asked his reaction to his recent loss he said “Well, you’re either winning or learning.” Bombshell, right there! Fantastic attitude – which I’m taking straight back to the studio, my parenting and every facet of my life.
In order to learn you have to feel comfortable, safe enough to make mistakes. (Because as Jimmy says, it’s in those mistakes the learning will happen.) You can’t learn when you’re paralyzed by fear, whether it’s inflicted by Scarey Guy stalking the classroom, or by your own self-imposed level of expectation and all that you’ve attached to that. When you fear that ruining a painting will be your most likely outcome you will probably ruin the painting, maybe not even finish it and most definitely not make a valuable deposit in the Learning Bank.
This is very difficult because all of us have this fear when we start. I certainly did. It’s what we dread the most when we make a painting. The idea is to create something we love, so to finally come out with something we don’t like or to get lost along the way, is ultimately really disappointing and rocks our self-belief. We need to be able to embark on our work with confidence and a healthy belief that we are capable and if we don’t win this time we’ll LEARN! WINNING OR LEARNING folks. There’s no losing.
So how do we get the confidence in the beginning when we don’t know that much? We have success. How do we have success when we’re beginning? We need bite-size chunks, roadmaps, guides – frameworks that keep us on track, keep us safe while allowing us to make decisions and learn.
This is the basis of my teaching. I break it down to steps, frameworks, questions to ask a painting, what to think about when, principles and guidelines to use while you’re finding your feet. As you get more and more confident you need them less and less, but they fast track success in the beginning.
This is what I teach in my course Fix & Finish which I’m launching again on April 8. If you want to learn how to get unstuck and navigate your way through creating a painting that you love then you need to sign up for the Webinar where I’ll be introducing these frameworks and guidelines.
The Webinar is free and will give you the steps to finishing your paintings without losing your way, identifying and solving problems and creating work you love in your style. Sign up, I promise there will be no beards, no whistling-codes to decipher – just me with a smile and maybe a headscarf! – Although that was the 80’s….