Skip to main content

Authenticity is not an Easy Choice



Lightworks 1 30x30" Oil on panel ©2015 Janice Mason Steeves

I've written before about courage. Many times actually: at times when I have changed directions in my work, when I have felt vulnerable, and when I moved into abstraction in my painting.

  Before the two advanced painting workshops I taught this past month, I invited the students to send me some suggestions for topics they wished me to address in the workshop. Many wrote to say that they wished for some discussion of authenticity and truth. They wondered how to achieve that.

 Authenticity takes courage. It takes courage to show your art, to open yourself to criticism and rejection, to pick yourself up when things aren't going well. Painting teaches that. Not everyone will like your work. Some will hate it. Others will totally understand it. But opening that way, showing that vulnerability is how you find the truth of who you are. It's saying, "This is who I am." 

Brene Brown in her book The Gifts of Imperfection says, "Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are. Choosing authenticity means cultivating the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable."
 
Choosing authenticity is not an easy decision. e.e. cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself––means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight––and never stop fighting."

 To hold to the thread of courage when others aren't interested in our work isn't an easy task. It's difficult to keep on exploring, pushing ourselves in new directions, opening to vulnerability again and again... whew. Makes me wonder why we pursue this work.

Van Gogh had some words regarding that sort of courage. They were posted in Brainpickings, one of my favourite blogs and I read them to the students. In that post, the author quoted from Vincent Van Gogh in his letters to his brother Theo, published in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters:

"If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie… That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.
You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas IS AFRAID of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “you can’t.”

Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.
- Mother Theresa


Comments

  1. Excellent post, Janice. Fighting our way through the entanglement when either no one cares or someone we do care about sends discouragement; this has been my path for the last year. I become very discouraged but I do not quit. It is a challenge that I'm not sure is ever resolved. The thing is just to keep on with the work which I do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good for you to stick with it. Thanks for sharing this Judy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. So great to have you stabilizing me periodically!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Such a poignant blog post Janice. i took several days to read it and have pinned it up in my studio. Where do we find the strength to do this day in day out - life throws us curve balls and plans often go out the window (as does confidence). We suffer from speed wobbles and indecision. The very fact that we feel these emotions shows we are on the right path. What we have today via the internet is finally a chance for artists to connect together and not feel so alone on the journey. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. HI Nicki,
    So wonderful to hear from you. Thanks so much for writing. Yes, it's so wonderful to have connections with other artists to know we aren't alone on the path!

    ReplyDelete
  6. HI Janice, Just read this incredible post of yours and at a mmoment when I am about to throw myself into the ring again after months of "distractions" of varying natures. Thank you again and always for that strength and straight forwardness that your words always express,great inspiration for me. My best.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The shading on this is very subtle and beautiful. It almost looks pearl and luminescent.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meet the Owners of a Scottish Castle

Anne Tristine Nguyen, Ali Orr Ewing, their children, Ava, Atticus and  their dog, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dunskey Estate, Portpatrick, Scotland Anne Tristine Nguyen and her husband, Alistair Orr Ewing are the owners of Dunskey Estate near Portpatrick, Scotland where I will teach a painting workshop in September. Dunskey is a splendid Edwardian castle on 2000 acres of ocean-front land with miles of walking trails. As well as daily workshop sessions in the studio on the top floor of the castle, our small group of artists will enjoy breathtaking hikes, superb accommodation and fabulous meals.  Not having met owners of a castle before, I asked Anne if I could interview her to hear a little of their background story and that of the castle. Can you tell me a little of your personal story and that of your husband, Alistair Orr Ewing? Anne emigrated to America when she was ten years old, but it was at an art gallery in Saigon, her birthplace, where she met Al

The Importance of Silence in Art

Gathering Light 60x60"  Oil on canvas © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves  Michael David Rosenberg, the musician known as Passenger, sings, "See all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts." In the workshops I teach, I find that one of the most common problems with paintings is that they shout. Most have too much going on: too many small shapes, too much texture, extremes of colour, too many lines, too much, too much. One thing I say most often as I walk around the classroom working with students individually, is 'make bigger shapes'.  But not only bigger shapes. Quiet shapes.  Where can your eye go and rest in the painting? That isn't a consideration in much of contemporary painting or much of contemporary life.  Ours is a noisy world both visually and auditorily.  Ours is a world that shouts.  People are afraid of silence. I wrote a blog post  3 years ago about planning a retreat in my own home, where I shut off the computer and the phon

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland   I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article   here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resulting in poverty