Acrylic Painting Lessons & Techniques

Myth #2 - I Need to Know How

A beginner is an empty vehicle, an open receptacle, unburdened and free to learn and explore. On the other hand an “expert” can be full of themselves, pumped up with all that they know and worst of all unable to learn anything new. Although knowledge is very important, it has no place the moment you pick up the brush. The most desirable state for inspiration and learning is emptiness and openness. All of the expertise and knowledge about things show up after the fact as critics critique, commentators comment, assessors assay, and judges judge. Their knowledge is of no value at the actual moment of accomplishment! Something else was required to bring it about.

“The story is told of a mystic knower, who went on a journey with a learned grammarian as his companion.They came to the shore of the Sea of Grandeur. The knower straightway flung himself into the waves,but the grammarian stood lost in his reasonings, which were as words that are written on water. The knower called out to him, "Why dost thou not follow?" The grammarian answered, "O Brother, I dare not advance. I must needs go back again." Then the knower cried, "Forget what thou didst read in the books of Síbávayh and Qawlavayh, of Ibn-i-Hajíb and Ibn-i-Málik, [Famed writers on grammar and rhetoric.] and cross the water."
Bahá'u'lláh -The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys

If we are honest here, we can see that great things in painting, art or any other creative endeavor JUST HAPPEN! If present, we take credit for the feat of course, but if we investigate further into the matter, the event JUST HAPPENED, and most often we cannot explain how! Would it not be better for us to practice “getting out of the way” and allowing things to work by themselves? In painting, worrying, fretting, nervousness and anxiety imply that it is we who do it, and denotes a certain blindness to the truth, that the artist is the servant of the work and NOT its AUTHOR.

For those of us who already paint, we most likely have gone through periods of what I call “ego burn” which usually occurs after our failures and our duds. (A dud is a failed attempt to prove that we KNOW what we’re doing)

UNTIL YOU GET OVER THE PERSONAL INSULT THAT COMES FROM RECOGNIZING THE TRUTH, THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO IT, AND THAT YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW HOW TO DO IT, YOU WILL NOT LEARN, DISCOVER OR BE SURPRISED AND ALL YOUR EFFORTS WILL FALL SHORT OF THE PROMISE PAINTING HOLDS BEFORE YOU. HOWEVER, SHOULD YOU ACCEPT AND MOVE BEYOND THE PAIN OF THIS REALIZATION, THE ACT OF PAINTING WILL NURTURE YOU, INSPIRE YOU, THRILL YOU, EXCITE YOU AND FILL YOU WITH ENERGY AND LIFE AND WILL SPUR YOU ONWARDS TOWARD NEW ADVENTURES AND POSSIBLILITIES NEVER BEFORE IMAGINED.

All of us are aware of those things we KNOW and the things we DON’T KNOW. The creative realm does not exist within these areas but rather outside of them. The creative realm might be called the realm of pure possibility or abstraction. In the context of this argument, it might be referred to as that area in which I “DON’T KNOW THAT I DON’T KNOW”. In other words, beyond the realm of my thinking and even beyond the area of what I think is possible. What comes from this area is a surprise, UNEXPECTED, UNIMAGINED, JOYOUS, INVIGORATING AND UPLIFTING.

OUR JOB AS PAINTERS IS TO SURPRISE OURSELVES

Next >> Myth #3 “Working on Paintings”

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