Some Constructive Criticism?

I’ve been painting for a long time, but I haven’t been a confident painter for very long at all. I wasn’t confident enough to just throw paint at a canvas and let an artwork evolve. I thought it had to look ‘right’ from the start. I didn’t know about all the ‘ugly stages’ a painting goes through before it starts to take shape - which is a shame because those stages are my favourite thing about painting now. I missed out on the evolution of a painting for so many years. I wasn’t confident at mixing colours either. I didn’t know which colours to stir together to make another colour. I did a lot of ‘paint straight from the tube’ painting because I didn’t know how to use the select, popular colours to get all the other colours that I needed. As a result, a lot of my paintings were bright, exaggerated, and extremely vividly coloured (see above) - nothing wrong with that, of course, especially not if it’s on purpose, or if you’re learning, but for me it was because I wasn’t confident with paint. This was at art school, and we used to have these crits where you would be put into a group of 10-15 people with a tutor, and we would walk round the studios and constructively criticise each other’s works. I always hated it, and not because it was a bad experience, it’s definitely not - constructive criticism is a great exercise - I hated it because I wasn’t confident in my work, so, explaining it and defending it during a ‘crit’ was quite difficult. I spent 4 years at art school, and I can honestly say I had no idea what I was doing the entire time. I loved it, and making stuff really excited me. I knew I was passionate about it, but I didn’t understand it, and I certainly wasn’t confident in anything I was making. Actually, as a quick side note: First year at art school, you spend time doing a bit of everything, they don’t want you going in assuming you know what you want to do, so you get to trial a whole bunch of things; textiles, architecture, painting, life drawing, intermedia, digital art, photography, sculpture, performance, anything that you can think of. I knew that I wanted to paint, but you still had to give everything a bash, and there was only a select amount of spaces open for each subject. I was so scared of my paintings being rejected that I didn’t make any. Instead, I made sculptures, and did a lot of written word stuff, and when my tutors asked me what I was hoping to take in second year, they were shocked when I said painting. Their exact words were, ‘We can’t let you in to painting, when we haven’t seen any of your paintings’ - so with a week to go until they made a decision about which students were getting into each group, I worked all day/all night to make a whole portfolio of paintings. My fear of my paintings being rejected almost cost me that space. Anyway, I was terrified of the ‘crits’. There’s a fine line between constructive criticism, and just a full on negative comment, and at the time I struggled to accept either. I would get real upset about a crit. What other people thought of my work really affected me. I was shy, scared of everything and everyone, and I was so socially awkward that most human interaction crippled me. I used to do my family’s head in with how shy I was, so much so, they took me to a hypnotist to sort it out haha!! That was almost a decade ago, though, and even writing about that person seems alien to me. I’m so far detached from that, that I can both laugh at myself, and give myself a bit of grief that I wasted so much time. I get a lot of messages about dealing with negative comments on your artwork, and I understand that it puts so many people off creating stuff, and that destroys me. I see it and hear about it daily, and I can’t understand why we would be so quick to insult rather than inspire. I still get negative comments, that’s never going to stop, but my feelings about it have completely changed, and that’s 100% about confidence. I’m confident in both my work, and myself. I sit in front of an easel every day, and make a painting. I get lost in the process. It’s exciting, it’s addictive, it’s so much fun! Some days it’s easy, some days it’s a challenge, and both of those scenarios are wonderful. The whole process makes me happy. I’ll work on a painting until it’s done to the absolute best of my ability, and I don’t do that because it’s my ‘job’ or because I’ve got to reach a target, or I’ve got to make a wage. I do it because I’m in love with it, and I won’t be happy until it’s ‘perfect’ (for me) and that’s how I know it’s my best. So, a negative comment isn’t anything - not compared to all of that positive stuff. It doesn’t affect me because I can’t do any better than my best, and I give every painting that, and although I hope to progress in the future, my best, now, is good enough. Constructive criticism is completely different, take that on board, that stuff is good for you, you need it. Listen to all of it, and take from it what you need to move forward. People that know how to constructively criticise are good for you. It usually sounds something like, ‘What you’re aiming for here is great. I wonder what it would look like if you added some X, or if you stripped back Y, or have you thought about Z’, or something like, ‘This area looks a bit like A, but if you concentrated on B, you might end up with something more like C’ - I don’t know, something like that. I taught an art class for a few years at the Wellington Gallery, and I could ALWAYS find something that I loved about an artwork, and so I would start with that, ‘What I love about this is…….’, and then from that you can journey into something constructive. But comments like, ‘rubbish’, or ‘shite’, or ‘ that’s not art’ are unhelpful, but, it’s important to learn to embrace and enjoy those comments as much as the negative ones. Let them just wash over you. Words are nothing, not really, but creating is something so strong. I was contacted fairly recently about a younger artist receiving negative feedback on her work, where her work had been deemed ‘not art’ because it had been painted from a photograph. Who decides that? Who decides what IS art, and what IS NOT art? You know who? You! You make that decision. It’s art if you say so. Art is so vast, a found object can be art, a messy bed can be art, a shark can be art, so of course a painting from a photograph can be art. My ‘job’ is to make paintings of photographs. People send me their photographs, and more often than not, my ‘job’ is to make almost direct copies of those in paint. That’s not considered art, but who cares, I love it, and my love for it doesn’t change because it’s art to some people and not to others. I don’t care whether it’s called art, it’s definitely painting, and that’s enough. Love what you do, and what other people think about what you do will not matter. Find/make your own happiness, and do it, regardless of what box people put it in. Confidence is like a superpower, you’re bulletproof. So find something you love, throw everything you have into that. It doesn’t need to be art, that’s just my thing. It might be yours too, of course, but it might be music, it might be poetry, cooking, writing, reading, exploring, walking, anything! Find happiness, peace and strength within that, and it’ll surprise you how all the negative stuff pales in comparison.