Doubt

Power and paralysis

Dear Friend

I spend a lot of time mired in doubt. Drowning sometimes. Often stuck.

A little doubt is no bad thing in a creative journey: ‘Is this working?’, ‘Do I need to add more to this painting?’, ‘Is it finished?’, ‘Am I heading in an interesting direction?’

Doubt can guide and direct my work. It stops me falling into complacency or arrogance. Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty can be fatal.

Beyond that level of productive doubt though, there is often something deeper. Insecurity. Imposter syndrome. Lack of self-confidence or self-respect.

While I can happily (and endlessly) analyse myself, tracing this element of my doubt to one part of my history, and another part to a different period of life, I know it’s all an intellectual game. We never really know what connects with what across time, popping up in the present moment to block the creative flow. Self-analysis is a fun and sometimes revealing game. But it’s a game nonetheless.

A facet of this deeper doubt is knowing what standards to use when making decisions or assessments. As a visual artist I’m self-taught. There are things I love about that - a feeling that gets reinforced when I talk to some of the ‘trained artists’ who visit my studio in Bushmills, who seem to have more knowledge but less passion than I feel in myself. My lack of formal training means I don’t know what I’m not supposed to do - and that’s always a good starting point in a creative journey.

Being self-taught has disadvantages though. A key one is that I don’t know what I don’t know. I struggle to assess my work. I find it hard to see what I make, because I don’t know criteria I should use to see it with. Composition? Colour theory? Cultural influence? Connection to specific styles?

I can end up feeling very lost in my painting. Yesterday, feeling so, I made two ink abstracts - one pure ink, one with some charcoal. They’re different to what I often do - not least because they are colourful, while often my abstracts are muted or pure black.

Are they any good? I like them both. But do I like them because they contain for me traces of the pleasure I experienced while lost in the making of them? Are they like holiday snaps which remind me of a lived experience, but are of little interest to people who were not there?

I feel the same with the music I compose. I love listening back to it (I’m doing so as I write this to you), but have no real criteria to judge whether it’s ‘any good’.

I doubt the criteria that other people use. Objective assessments are often too conceptual to connect with the intrinsic flow of life I look for in art. Subjective assessments are, well….. subjective. They’re opinions.

So I look at these pictures and wonder what to do with them. Are they masterpieces? Scrap paper? Something in-between?

One way can gauge value is to put something on sale. That’s a mechanism for garnering external validation. We’re often told we should not rely on external validation for our inner peace. While there’s truth in that, it’s only a partial truth. We’re interconnected creatures and external validation is a form of confirming, reinforcing and building new connectedness. External validation matters. Ideally though it should complement, not replace, internal validation.

How much can I trust what others say about my work? How validating is external validation? There are people who will speak warmly of my paintings when they come to my studio - but perhaps they would speak warmly of the paintings of any artist they met in such a place. Perhaps they mean it, but their warm words reflect their generosity, curiosity or empathy - not the quality of the art on the wall. There are others who say little but who, later, tell people my work really spoke to them.

The only real external validation in that context is that someone buys a picture or a book. When someone actually is willing to exchange something of theirs for something I’ve created, I know my work has, in some real way, connected with them. It’s not an uncomplicated transaction. Some people are able to buy a £600 painting with considerably less thought than some people must give to buying a £10 mini-original. Nonetheless, the decision to exchange is a concrete action.

Actions communicate. Words are slippery.

Without validation, how does one proceed? I’ve always taught that pursuing pleasure - actively hunting for joy - is the path towards immersion, flow and creativity. I still believe that, but increasingly recognise, especially in a world where I need to sell work to put food on the table (and repair the roof of the house which the last storm gave a bit of a battering to), my pleasure ALSO must align with the taste of others. Or - to put it another way - I need to find ‘others’ whose taste aligns with my pleasure.

I’ve no real answer to any of this. It has been a lifelong investigation and sometime struggle.

This morning I’ll return to the two pieces of work I made yesterday. I’ll look at them. Either they’ll be finished and I can frame them, or they can sit and ask for more work, or they can be turned into scrap paper. I’ve no way of knowing what the ‘right’ decision will be.

This much I do know: after I’ve looked at yesterday’s work, I must return to action. I must paint something new. I can never move beyond the doubt of this moment except by constructing the next.

Internal and external validation rely on action.

So, onward!

I hope your day is going wonderfully.

Warmest wishes to you.

John