How You Silence or Dismiss or Embrace the Negative Mind

Response to comment: 'A Thousand Crappy Drawings'

Professor Lily Hope Working

Response to comment: 'A Thousand Crappy Drawings'

Lily Hope - lilyhope.com asks:

“I’d love to know how you silence or dismiss or embrace the negative mind that tells you “this is crap, don’t start.” “Oh, this turned out mediocre, what are you gonna do with it?”

And then, we’ll, I guess like your art teacher, what DO you do with the mediocre stuff? Do you cut out the decent parts and expand on them? How many mediocre pieces do you keep in a year?”

The best way is the suspension of judgment. That can be a hard thing to do for artists and it is a good excuse not to do anything. There is no reason to judge anything you make. Is it good or no good? Who cares? It doesn’t matter just like thoughts wandering through your mind. Judgement is something applied much later. At the beginning just freely create with abandon. Analysis must come later as part of a group of works. It is better to begin than to make nothing. That is how we develop and evolve. After 50 years I still make works all of the time without any expectation of making something of ‘worth’. The value to me is not letting the days go by unanswered. I showed up. Close enough. Every day is going to be a different energy.

You might remember me commenting to your mom many years ago that she could stop doing all that wonderful work she used to do in her journal; the dreams and drawings, watercolors and weaving pattern ideas and thoughts and notes and instead get a hundred sheets of large drawing paper and put them in a stack and use that in the same way that she journals every morning and just turn the page over and go to the next sheet until she has the whole stack upside down before turning them over to look at them as a set.

That way you don’t look at them again till they are all finished as a group and then lay them all out and figure out what you like, what you can add to, enhance or improve on and what you want to sell off at an exhibition after looking at them with new eyes. It gives your trail a while to develop. Also you can see the trends in your thought process over time. It is fascinating and a great documentary record. It doesn’t have to be polished art. Then you can photograph them and make the best of them into a printed book.

After three months of daily practice you are going to get better and better and develop a method and be able to look back with clarity and confidence. As you go along you will become comfortable and settled into the process and work merrily along.

Since you would be doing it as a big journal it would take off the pressure of thinking of them individually and you would probably keep everything. Or you can give the ones you don’t want or need away as gifts. Nobody else will think a gift of art is mediocre. It will be cherished.

The biggest battle is our own negative judgements toward our ‘little’ selves. That negative, judgmental stance is our way of attempting to keep our own creative vision on a leash. We think we are too small and to limited to express it. But our inner being is vast and magnificent. Let it express itself. It doesn’t need you to judge it. We only need to humbly quiet our mind, be clear of heart and let the inner being free to do its work. Then watch and learn with amusement and fascination. Our judgement and discernment is merely for the little refinements afterward. Once discernment is applied, we will probably think; “Hum, that is perfect as is.”

I normally don’t ever throw anything away, they are all roughly equal to me. Just another piece of the map in a lifetime archive. Keep it organized.

There is a post from Journal Entry: Sunday, September 18, 2022 scheduled for tomorrow that actually talks about this in greater detail. Watch for that.