Mirror Mirror
I am reading a book called “Art and Fear”, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. He had an interesting section about perfectionism. He talked about a teacher that had announced one day that he was going to devide the class into two groups. Now one group would be graded on quantity and one on quality. The requirement was simple. For the quantity group it was measured by weight, 50 lbs equaled an “A”, forty pounds equaled a “B” and so forth. Now the quality group only could do one ceramic. It had to be their best work and quality of work was the grade. Well guess what, when it came time to grading the groups while the quantity group was churning out the ceramics and learning from their mistakes, the quality group was theorizing not doing and had little to show for it. They had “grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay”. This in the end good work is not synonymous with perfect work. “Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error.” So inevitably our work will be flawed and looking for perfections is flawed.
There comes a time when we have to quit rationalizing and just do. No matter how much you think about doing. It is not doing. We can rationalize it isn’t good enough to do yet or not the right time. But unless we start to bring this quantity of doing and risk making mistakes we cannot learn and grow.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. I have often been guilty of perfectionism and thus paralyzed. I just didn’t know why. Now I do. Thank you…
Gayle
This is so true. Pottery is a creative hobby for me. You only get better as you try things and find what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes you push the clay until it fails, and your piece collapses, just to see where that boundary is.
My 24 year old pottery teacher, when I took private lessons in his studio this summer, told me, “It’s not the result, it’s the learning process.” He’d take a beautiful bowl I’d thrown and slice it in half so we could see if the walls were even. I got better (although still not great) at letting go of having to have a perfect outcome.
Last weekend, I took a business growth workshop from Marc LeBlanc (@caminoguy). One of his lessons is, “done is better than perfect.”
I’m learning more about this every day. Thank you for this wise post and great reminder. (@feistywoman)
I’ve been a creative person my entire life, but never really applied it to art. For many reasons too numerous to discuss in this post, I majored in accounting and business management. However, for many years I’ve had a desire to create art. I read this book a couple of years ago and realized so much about myself and perfectionism.
After 25 years of wishing to pursue art, I went back to college (part-time) at the age of 45 and took my first art class. The “perfectionism fear” still creeps up, but I’m not letting it paralyze me as it once did. I’m planning to read “Art and Fear” again and I’m sure it will be a different experience for me since I’ve just finished my 3rd semester of art classes.
I really like the phrase “Done is better than perfect” that the previous post shared. I have written it down and posted in my home to remind me…thanks for sharing it. This philosophy is my life theme for 2010!
Hi Richard, Thank you for your reply. As you can see the reason why I read this book was also to remind myself that I don’t need to be perfect and that perfectionism is a killer. Sometimes those happy accidents we call mistakes end up being the perfection we desire. I am the same as you. This fear does constantly rear its ugly head. Out of production we always get better and better and many times the “bad painting” ends up being the catalyst for the wonderful painting of the future. It is all good. I am going to take my own medicine and remind myself that “Done is better than perfect”. My story is similar to yours in that I started in taking art at the local college when I was 38. I always wondered if it would have been better to start earlier, but at the same time I probably wouldn’t have been ready and had the desire like I do now. Good luck and would love for you to share your work. Thank you.
Pretty clever idea. “Making mistakes” I’m for somewhat balance between thinking and doing. Just think enoughly and do enoughly.
Thank you for this post.
Yes, Simon it is all about balance. But sometimes we get caught up in the perfection so much that we get either blocked or the work may look labored. I did check you work out, very nice.