Michele Karlsson Art

I’ve begun a second rendition of my 4 week “Drawing as a Spiritual Practice” class. I got lots of lovely feedback from my first group and I learned a few things on my own so this next course is the same but with a few tweaks that I think will make it a more fulsome experience for my fellow artists.

The first hurdle I always have to manage with most everyone is that they think they’re

1. Not a real artist
2. Not a good enough artist
3. Consider their creativity to be a hobby not a calling

It always amazes me, this humility that we’re all somehow trained to put out there. That because we’re not da Vinci or Picasso or Norman Rockwell that we’re less. Or that our creative pursuits don’t have the gravity of a real job.

It seems unfair that we should be made to feel embarrassed for wanting to have a creative outlet or that we might not really care one whit what others think of the art that we create.

That’s what I spend a fair amount of time working with my group the first week; we learn to talk to ourselves and others without apologizing for what we create or how we feel about it. Yes, we dare to dream of creating beauty or truth. No, we may not be great artists right now but then again no one starts out great. Every artist, musician, writer or other creative spends a lot of time practicing their skills so that when their moment comes, they can do epic things. But they aren’t epic every day, in every way, and we shouldn’t expect ourselves to be any different.

That’s my moment of wisdom for today. I can be epic, I will be epic, but I don’t have to be that all the time. In fact I shouldn’t be. Epic failures are where some of my best work has begun.