Have You Ever Been In An Art Slump?
Talk about demoralizing. Art slumps can really take it out of ya. But only if we let it.
Everyone in every profession has bad days. The trick is not let your mind play tricks on you into thinking you don’t know how to do something. As I was thinking about art slumps and how to extricate yourself from one, I, being the sports fan I am, thought about baseball. Click HERE to see this weeks video.
Baseball hitters are the one profession where the slump tells you everything you need to know about them. A hitter can’t hit. I’m not talking about going 0 for 4. That’s just baseball. I’m taking about going 0 for 20 – games. Now that’s a slump. Now the hitter has in his head, “I can’t hit”. He can hit, just not recently.
In researching for this topic I watched a number of YouTube videos on baseball hitting slumps. In this video I related baseball hitters efforts to get out of a slump to getting out of an art slump. Click HERE to watch the video.
One of the players I really liked was Sean Casey, formerly of the Cincinnati Reds. He was pretty quirky and animated, like me. He made several great points, but the one I liked the best was he had a coach tell him to make a video only of his best hits, so he watched that video of him slamming that ball, over and over again. That’s a lot of positive thinking.
I’ve had art slumps and I’ve had friends that have had art slumps, some lasting months. It’s really important for us as artists, not to let the day we couldn’t paint well take up residence in our heads. It can come to visit occasionally but it can’t take over the living room, dining room and the bedroom of my mind. I can’t allow it to leave crumbs and dirty socks all over the floor of my mind like a teenager with an attitude.
We have to walk back into that studio, put the apron back on, get out the brushes and paint again – and again – and again. Paint what you’re good at, paint what you love, fill yourself up with inspiration. Go to a museum or a gallery. Take a walk outside in nature. Whatever it is that fills you up, do that.
I like to think of the golf slogan – “a bad day of golf is better than a good day at work”. To me a bad day in the studio is better than a good day almost anywhere else.
Hey, thanks so much for stopping in today. If you think this would be of interest to anyone, please feel free to share.
Have a great day and let’s paint together real soon.
XO,
Sharon,
p.s. Click HERE to watch the video.