Setting goals for your art is step one. Step two is becoming your own art coach and setting yourself up to sucessfully achieve your goals. Acting as your own art coach, you’ll want to create personally tailored strategies, routines, and habits to help to help you get past the double whammy of fear and inertia and to help you stay motivated and passionate about creating your art. Here are 5 tips for setting yourself for successful art making:
Mark Mehaffey, Blue Monolith, 2008 American Watercolor Society Silver Medal of Honor
1. Stay connected to the fact that art is an act of intention. Commit to honoring yourself and your intention to create the kind of art that you love.
2. Find your ideal time of day to create and work with it. For years I guilted myself for not keeping to a 9 to 5, 5 day a week schedule in the studio. Now I honor the fact that I’m not a morning person and that I have more physical energy in the afternoon. So I set up a schedule where I work on other things in the morning; reading, writing, phone calls, attending to household chores, etc. After lunch I go into the studio and paint until dinner time. That gives me about 5 good hours of painting time. I start tiring after about 4 or 5 hours in the studio anyway, so that’s a good time to quit for the day. I don’t paint after dinner, that’s my time to relax. However, if I’ve got a “hot” project going, I can put in 8 to 10 hour days if necessary. I just wouldn’t want to do that on a regular basis. Occasionally my schedule allows for a full week of studio time, but I’m happy if can get 3 or 4 days a week, and sometimes I “steal” time from the weekend to get my 3 or 4 days.
Mark Mehaffey, a good friend and an amazing painter, and I recently talked about how important it is to keep to a structured routine and not depend on inspiration to get you into the studio. We both agree that inspiration comes from working, and that the antidote to artist’s block is work. Most of the time, just going into the studio and starting anywhere on anything leads to becoming engaged and excited.
Where Mark and I differ is in our schedules. Mark is (or as he says, he has trained himself to be) a morning person. He rises at 5:30 or 6 each morning and is in the studio by 8 am. He works from 8 to noon, has lunch and perhaps a quick game of Gin with his fabulous wife Rosie, and then returns to his studio until dinner time. He says that if he starts tiring late in the afternoon, he may stop painting and do something less demanding but still centered around his art making. Mark paints 5 days a week and says he doesn’t like the weekends because they force him to return to “real” life.
Talking with Mark always inspires me. He talks about his art with so much passion and he is truly committed to honoring his art and his intention to create it. Mark and Rosie are a team and they have set up strategies and routines (like sharing household chores) that help maximize Mark’s time in the studio. Mark won the Silver Medal of Honor in the 2008 American Watercolor Society Exhibition. The photo in today’s post is that prize winning painting, and you can see more of Mark’s work at: www.mehaffeygallery.com
See my next post for the remaining 3 tips for becoming your own art coach and setting yourself up for successful art making.
Happy Painting!
I enjoyed this post Donna, that we each have a time of day when we work best and to preserve that time for making art is important, but I think there’s something else at play here, too. Mark has a fantastic wife who enables him to be free to work at his painting career full time, while you don’t have a “wife”. You and I, women, have responsibilities to keep your household going in addition to making art. I think this obstacle holds back lots of women artists; I know it does me. My obligation is to run my home and though my once high housekeeping standards have diminished, it still takes time both in our home and in the garden… and keeping up with friends and family while my husband brings home the bacon while running 2 businesses. Granted, I’m of an older generation with traditional job assignments between my husband and me while this generation is more into equal responsibilities
Jo, you are so right! I’ve often said, “I need a wife!” Besides Mark, I know of many artists who are lucky enough to be part of husband-wife teams that support their art career. My husband is still working but we do share a lot of the household chores, which helps a lot! Family and household responsibilities indeed do hold lots of women artists back. The challenge is to do it anyway. I find myself getting more creative about finding ways to manage my art life and my “real” life, which are no longer separate. My art is on my list of “responsibilities” and “obligations”; it’s a priority, which is a major hurdle for both men and women. Donna
Great post, Donna! An important topic, especially for women. To add to all the other things we women feel responsible for, I have to add in exercise which “kills” the morning for me. I have managed to eliminate much of the other stuff or minimize it. I think a lot of the issue is feeling permission to put your needs ahead of others. I try to encourage other women to be a little more “selfish” when it comes to their needs. It’s amazing how the important people in your life will accommodate you if you take yourself seriously. If you don’t make art a priority, why should anyone else?
Hi Myrna,
I love what you said, “If you don’t make art a priority, why should anyone else?” Women do feel as if they need someone else’s permission, which is a problem. But really the greater problem is giving ourselves permission. If that’s in place, the magic can happen. Without it – no magic – just sittin’ around waitin’ for someone else to give us their blessing! BTW – I love your blog and visit often. I don’t leave comments because I’m Blogger deficient – the Google Account thing with password and those silly letters is beyond me. Donna
Donna, leaving comments will grow your blog readership. Besides, others would value your insightful comments and I would love to hear what you have to say. Since you have a blog, all you have to do is type in the box the crazy scrambled letters as you see them and click on send. Try it….you’ll like it!