See this little girl? This little girl loved to draw and paint.
She didn't care what it looked like or whether it was 'right' or not - she would just create and then, with the biggest smile on her face, she would thrust said creation under the nose of the nearest adult and say 'Look what I made!'.
In fact, she loved creating so much that, if left to hear own devices, she would paint herself!
But then this little girl started to get older, other people's opinions started to come onto her radar and suddenly she was not quite so confident that everything she created was a masterpiece!
So what has this got to do with your resiDENcy?
Well, the biggest issue I face in my artistic endevours is my own self doubt...and I can tell you exactly where it came from!
I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than an artist (I wrote and illustrated my first book when I was 7) but when I asked my art teacher to help me put together a portfolio he replied ‘You’re not talented enough to go to art school’. That was the start of, what I like to call, my Shit Committee. That teachers voice is definitely the Chair of the Board but round the table are Mrs ‘Art’s Not A Proper Job’, Mr ‘I Like It But It’s Not Worth That Much’, Miss ‘My Friend Could Do Better’, Mr ‘It Looks Like A Kid Did It’ and Mrs ‘I Can Get A Photograph Printed For A Fraction Of The Price’. When I try to create something out of my comfort zone all those voices get far too shouty for my liking and I start to doubt everything I’m doing.
I would love to see what I can create when I stop worrying about ‘not being good enough’ and just create. My DEN will be my safe space to do that. I have no idea what the actual outcome will be (it could be that this was a stupid idea and if that is the case I will ask you to be very nice and never speak of it again! Lol) but I’m hoping that the absolute worse case scenario is that we end up with a lovely community of resiDENcy participants who will cheer each other on from the sidelines no matter what each of us are doing. Best case? Going forward I manage to create without going through all the angst that I currently do. I suspect the actual outcome will be somewhere in between the two!
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