Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Courage

Every artist must have courage.   It is essential to what we do. Without it, no performer would ever get up on stage and risk ridicule and public humiliation, no singer would risk a bad note, no musician a missed key or beat,  no writer would submit a work for fear of rejection and no painter or photographer would ever show their work, for exactly those reasons.  It takes a great deal of courage to take our art, which is a bit of our soul, and offer it up, even to close friends or family.  To enter into competition requires the utmost courage and faith in one's work. A disassociated person will judge our work and find it to their liking, or not.  We artists never know why we are rejected or accepted.  No matter what our art form, we all go through the same process and it requires a great deal of courage.  

 My paintings are like children.  I'm sorry to lose one to a sale.  I want to keep them all close to me.  When I submit one into a juried show, I have double trouble.  Now I face the rejections or acceptace by someone completely unknown to me.  If my painting is accepted, in most cases the painting must be for sale.  I risk selling the work to someone completely unknown to me.  They will be walking off with my precious piece!  Will that person ultimately consign the painting to their attic? or worse, to a yard sale? or just give it away?  And worse thought - what if the piece is in the show and everyone wonders "why is this in here?"

For those of us who compete, we must step beyond all those thoughts and take our work and put it up for public judgment and display.  My painting "Habitat - Egret Hunts Frog" was recently accepted into the Watercolor Society of Oregon's spring 2015 show.  I offered two paintings to that juror.  The second "Counting Autumn's Days" was not accepted. One is suggestive, the other nonrepresentational.    Did that matter?  I have no idea!

I think it takes more courage to send a painting into competition than anything I ever did in life.  I've climbed mountains, kayaked rivers, backpacked, skied, hiked, run ultra marathons.  None of that compares to the feeling of sending a painting into a juried show and risking that rejection or acceptance.