The Bin

and what art you can find there...

I am a tempestuous artist. One day I will be ebullient with a well crafted rose and other days so low that I rip a page in two and toss it into the recycling with a huff.

Last Friday - art day in our house - I was working on a watercolor of a bridge I had very carefully crafted, drawn, and detailed with pen. The drawing was gorgeous - one of the best I have ever done. My Urban Sketch art teacher was showing us how to watercolor “freely” the sketch and while I was not entirely comfortable with his style, I was open to trying something new. He’s very free with his colors - allowing odd mixes to blend into murk and mud. I, well, let’s just say I am horrified at the puddles of green grey brown mud left by colors that should have tried to avoid one another.

He swabs paint on like a sailor cleaning the deck of a ship. I dab, sweep, touch, twist, and generally am quite careful with water and color. I followed his lead. Panic quickly set in with hideous color mixes rapidly taking over my carefully, week long drawing adventure. “It’s ruined” I say out loud. I am sweating, sad, heartbroken. I was so excited to try this technique and to see this bridge painted loosely and what I got was mud, dirt, murk. None of the bright colors he used at first stuck out. I shrugged my shoulders, wiped my sniffles and tossed it into the recycle bin.

About 2 hours later I went to add something to the bin and took it out. It was bad. Still. But maybe it was a learning experience? Underneath that painting I had tossed another that I was ever so proud of with bright red walls, urban sketching at it’s most vibrant - but I had added some green for foliage like my teacher did and in swirling, made mud again.

Fast forward a week. I am putting something in a folder in my husband’s office and I look up to see my painting sitting on a small easel on his shelf. Wait. What? My tossed out angry murky ruined painting. It’s here. In a place of honor where everyone can see it as they walk in the door.

I mention this to my daughter briefly and she says “Mom, while you were doing Pilates that day, I went to the bin to recover your work because I thought is was beautiful, but someone had already rescued it and I was so happy.”

I cannot stop thinking about this. My eyes are teary, my sniffles bigger. My daughter proceeded to tell me this isn’t the first time they have “rescued” my work from the trash. They are collecting my art. The art I feel is barely good enough to be called art. The art I criticize so harshly that it ends up as recycle. The papers I “doodle” on, test brushes on, play with color and shape on.

I don’t even know what to say. The number of times I have trashed 20 pages of written work because it frustrated me or the art books that have torn pages from frustrated rip outs far exceed the kept pages. If you are a writer, creator, artist - then you will get this. How many times have your discarded your work because your overly critical self said this isn’t good enough? How many beautiful, valuable pieces of art have you made in your life that ended up in the bin?

Check your computer or your phone trash. If you were to check these bins, you might find photos that weren’t up to your standards, ones that didn’t meet your level of judgment. Still good, sometimes uniquely interesting moments in time captured quickly and without a plan - they are the photos that get tossed first. The blurry background that makes the sun look magical, the slightly off center image that adds a hint of whimsy to the image. How many things have you created that you dumped because you were being super self critical?

A million. Pretty sure I have dumped whole novels, millions of photos and videos, stories, paintings, sketches - all because I am hyper critical of my own creation. What if you kept some of it and looked at it 5 years from now? Would it still be so bad as to merit the bin or would it remind you of a moment in time where you felt magical and open and easy? Would it remind you that murky colors under a bridge might actually make sense? Would it remind you that everything, including you and your life, are a work in progress? That nothing is perfect? That practice is also art.

Artists across time have painted over their works in horror at what they produced, composers have burned whole operas because they thought they weren’t good enough. How many more Mozart pieces would we have or how many more Van Gogh paintings would we be able to see if only the inner critic would soften a bit (some suggest Van Gogh may have painted over more than 1/3 of his early works)? Much of what Van Gogh produced he believed was valueless and in fact, rarely sold anything (research shows one definitive sale with perhaps another 2-3 exchanged pieces maximum). Many writers, artists, creators have spent their entire lives unnoticed and dismissed only to be heralded after death as the greatest voices of their time. What if my murky, muddy, splashy, splotchy bridge is actually a beautiful and valued work of art?

Everything we create has inherent value. Everything we make is unique. Everything we write is powerful. Everything we paint/sketch/draw is amazing. Because it is a perspective, a moment in time, a reflection of your unique way of seeing and interacting and interpreting the world around you.

I love my Urban Sketch teacher - but his style of watercolor painting is not mine (and in fact, causes me untold stress to even watch!). So, guess what? I spent the week playing around with melding some of his ideas in with my own interpretation and I LOVE IT. And that bridge? That bridge painting is really quite lovely now that I have stopped being so incredibly critical of my work and COMPARING it with his. After all, I just started Urban Sketching 3 months ago and he’s been doing it for 25 years!

I have a friend named Frederico - and he is one of the last traditionally trained Italian style fresco artists in the world. I was honored to visit him during his newest (and the largest ever modern fresco) installation and as he walked me through the process, he kept saying he wished he had done this or that - while I kept saying how stunning the work was and how powerful it came across. He told me that often all he can see is what he should have done or could have done - not the beauty in the actual production. (For more on his work and the fresco in question, check out this Substack post). He is a full time world reknowned and acclaimed fresco artist who still questions his artistic choices (and who has probably scraped away and “redone” many a wall in his lifetime).

So next time you hear that self critical voice telling you what you are creating or have created isn’t good enough, remember Van Gogh, Mozart, Frederico and untold other artists of our time that never felt they were good enough either but ended up creating some of the greatest masterpieces of all time. Remember that some of the greatest novelists thought their work was awful and almost gave up. Remember that artists we value and adore now, once tore canvases apart, painted over works, scraped off frescos from vaulted ceilings. Art is art. Let it be so…

Aprille XXx

If you have the time or inclination or are in the state of New Mexico - I invite you to check out Frederico Vigil’s stunning fresco work in the Albuquerque Convention Center. It is a once in a lifetime experience which will inspire, stun, and fill you with deep awe for the artist community!