On Being Unable to Paint Some days, I have no creative ideas. A curious thought, as I look at those words and reflect back on them. How do I determine that I am, or am not, creative? All that I know, at the time, is that I am unable to paint. Every mark I make seems wrong, and must be immediately erased. I can only hope that no stain remains on the canvas, to be revealed years from now as a ghostly residue, a pentimento. I love paintings, and I love to paint. When I have a good session, I feel cleansed and satisfied. I feel excited by the sense of progression, and I marvel at the results, at how I (or anyone) can create anything at all. A creative work, like a painting or a story, takes on a life of its own. It is an object separate from me, yet it also is me. I have done it: something that did not exist before now exists, propped up against a wall in my studio. To be unable to paint is almost painful. That each stroke, each color, seems wrong creates the opposite of those good feelings. In place of hope comes a sense of despair, and I feel as though there will never be another painting from my hands. I have apparently done all of the paintings that I had inside of me, and slowly I lose contact with that Muse who has been guiding me. I can see why some artists can become alcoholics, drug addicts or worse. It's not the artist's spirit that drives them mad; it's the absence of that spirit. At such times as I am lost in this vacuum, unable to continue my work with any sense of joy or even direction, I have two choices in alternative approaches. One is to continue to work by adopting a disciplined, conservative method. The other option is to descend into the darkness and explore the quandary that I have fallen into, as though it were a dark cave. The first option requires that I paint or draw anything in a simple representation. The subject could be a coffee cup or a vase of flowers. The goal is to represent an objective version of what I am seeing. This approach makes artmaking into an exercise, a task to be accomplished and left behind. I can set myself clear parameters of success and failure, expectation and goal. This approach often seems the easy way out, but to attempt to achieve a really good drawing of a coffee cup can lead me back to the original dilemma. As I continue in the drawing, attempts at creative marks can seem less than creative, often more wrong than right. The other option is to look directly onto the darkness. This idea comes from a book entitled On Not Being Able to Paint by Marion Milner. Using this method, I begin to draw without any particular objective in mind, kind of an automatic approach. I allow the image to present itself. Certainly this is a good way to allow myself to play with art, and to discover new approaches without any pressure. How can I do anything wrong? While the results of this exercise can be intriguing, and can often result in some bits of useful discovery, to continue in this manner does not necessarily mean that I am achieving my objective. I do not take these automatic images too seriously, because they have their own life, and they are the children of play and free association. What I really want is to again discover that creative flow that I lost. The painting I was working on may sit for weeks or longer with its face to the wall, because I cannot reconnect with the source of the painting. I think of Fellini's film "81/2" where the director is unable to finish his grand movie project. It is difficult to explain, but at some point, the light comes back on and I am on the other side of the block. I return to the painting, and begin to proceed again. It may be in another direction artistically, or it may be just some fine adjustments that get it all going again. Why is this? Has the Muse returned? Is the artist (am I) a conduit, a vessel, the bearer of some divine message? People talk of the "zone" - what is it and how do I get there? I return to the painting, pull it away from the wall, and I begin again, with just a feeling that I know what the next brush stoke should be. The process may not be effortless and wonderful (if it ever is), but I feel a confidence that had been missing. Is this akin to prophecy, where the sibyl in an ecstatic trance utters mysterious words of revelation, with their meaning subject to the interpreter? Isn't that a lot like art? Maybe that is the whole point. As artist, I am the prophet and the interpreter. I am not sure what it all means (these chaotic messages), but in my efforts to interpret, I create a painting. I can find the patterns. The painting process becomes a river again, without banks, but with definite direction. I am flowing along. Good and bad become relative, if not irrelevant. I am doing something that I have never done before. This is why ordinary painting is the worst. Any work of art that is competent, but ordinary, leaves us ultimately unsatisfied. The painter (or any artist) has not allowed himself or herself to jump over the edge. It is easier to sit in stagnant water going nowhere that to venture into unknown territory. Nothing in the painting will disturb us, and so nothing will be revealed as well. This is why Matisse painted his wife with a green nose. He did it because he could. The river carried him in that direction. Maybe he was in a similar situation: a painting almost complete, but lacking that indefinable spark that he knows that he saw but doesn't know that he knows. Maybe he was lost between the ordinary description and the unconscious chaos. But the moment comes with the brilliant green stripe, and all the pieces fell together. When asked, Matisse said that he did not look at his past paintings because they always reminded him of periods of "over-excitement." When you can't paint, everything seems flat. When you can, sometimes the heavenly choir sings too loudly. Stephen Michael Barnes

 

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