Imperfect Action

We artists are an inter­est­ing lot.  Many artists wait for the fire to strike before lay­ing the brush to can­vas, but not all.  Some of us plan our work in such detail the com­pleted can­vas is in our mind’s eye before we ever lay the brush to the canvas.

Either way, many of us wreck per­fectly good cloth­ing and some­times per­fectly good art when we walk by a “com­pleted” can­vas and see one small change we need to make before we walk out the door.

But any artist who has a sub­stan­tial body of work is aware of the prin­ci­pal of imper­fect action. It isn’t pos­si­ble to develop a body of work if you always must be inspired, or if you always must have a com­pleted plan. The muse is a fickle beast; and some­times the most inspired work flows from doing with­out a plan.

If you wait for all the con­di­tions to be per­fect, you just never get any­thing done.  It is far too easy to wait until you have the per­fect mood, the per­fect light, the per­fect tem­per­a­ture, the per­fect design, the per­fect finances, the per­fect place to hang, the per­fect mate­ri­als, the per­fect muse, the per­fect easel, the per­fect chair, the per­fect model, or the per­fect ref­er­ence, rather than tak­ing the risk of cre­at­ing some­thing that is not per­fect.  If you never act to cre­ate some­thing, there is noth­ing there to criticize.

But know this thing; you will never be the per­fect per­son on the per­fect day.

It is far bet­ter to put the time in devel­op­ing your skills while you wait for the spark, rather than try­ing to fig­ure how to do that when the muse is flit­ting about your head.  It is far bet­ter to pro­duce some­thing, than to pro­duce noth­ing because the plan was not perfect.

Imper­fect action does not mean ran­domly throw­ing paint at the canvas-unless that is your thing-it means pro­ceed­ing from your best prin­ci­pals and inten­tions even when con­di­tions are not per­fect. You put time into cre­at­ing, even if you do not feel inspired and do not have a plan.

In the end, you may dis­cover some of your best work, accord­ing to your patrons, did not arise from you being on the jazz or hav­ing the project laid out just so. In the end, you may dis­cover, the more you spend time act­ing imper­fectly, the eas­ier it becomes. Finally, you may real­ize this les­son applies to many other aspects of life, not just art.

Sweet Lit­tle Noth­ing 3 is a small lit­tle paint­ing that resulted from imper­fect action.  Find out more details and pur­chase it here.

Yours in Art

Jake, AZ Expres­sion­ist, Abstract & Fan­tasy Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.