The end of the month is here again. And again, I'm looking for a topic to write about. Why? Because. Because that's what I promised myself. To write every month. And it works! But what about this time? It's important to me that it will be relevant. That it will innovate. Be interesting. Every time it challenges anew.
That's exactly the point! That's how it goes in life. The same is true in painting. If there is no challenge - boring. If there is a challenge - not easy. But when we manage to succeed there is a wonderful feeling of victory. We develop a sense of competence and strengthen believing in ourselves.
It doesn't have to be something Olympic. Even a small victory is a victory. It fills us with feelings of pleasure and self-satisfaction.
To some extent a small victory is even better than a big one. People who have experienced great victories testify that they felt a sense of paralyzing fear at the thought - what now? As if from here they can only fall (as described by Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic).
Little victories are part of the journey. Not the goal and certainly not the end of it. They are there to encourage us to continue, be curious, ask questions, search, create, do.
Not every action ends in victory. Definitely not. But if the small victories weren't there, we would probably lose interest. Each with his own level of determination (Edison is said to have made over 2000 attempts until he managed to turn on the light bulb).
For the artist - the process is significant. Developing the abilities of letting go, deepening the understanding of color, line and stain, raising awareness of personal taste and sources of inspiration, etc.
Little victories for me are the paintings that come to completion, the ones that I love, at least at the time.
Back to writing: when I recognize a conceptual connection between something that happens in life and the painting process, I immediately write it in my collection of ideas note. When I sit down to write a post, I usually pull out that note and choose the relevant one for that moment. This time it worked differently. I started writing. Intuitive writing that you don't know where it's going. That way I realized the commonality to the painting process.
For me it's a little victory.