Crocodile Lessons about Perfectionism and Creativity

Dear Perfectionism,

Hello, again. And my, how you snuck right in there without me noticing. Into my watercolors. Into my expression of creativity.

You’re oh so very sneaky. And here I thought I knew you. I’ve already addressed you in my writing, that’s always why I write this blog now to air you out and take away your shame.

This semester, I have been very open with teaching others about your warning signs and to notice how you show up for them. What a trickster you are, showing up in my recent attempts to let go.

But I’m on to you again, my dear friend, Perfectionism.

With a kind fuck-you,
Tamara

How I got here, let’s step back for an overview. I’ve been working this semester on a few things:

·      How to free up creative blocks (this is where the 12 week Artist’s Way book comes in)

·      How to incorporate creativity into personal and professional work (this is where life coaching for myself, clients, and students comes in)

·      How to use my day and night dreams so that I tap into subconscious messages from my own and the world’s psyche (this is the work I do following Dr. Sharon Blackie’s mythological and eco-psychology work. Right now I’m using an online course called, Courting the World’s Soul, which is a more in-depth continuation of the workshop I took with her in NM last August)

To play with all of this, I started to paint with watercolors. They felt more forgiving and playful than oils (which used to be my fave) or acrylics. Painting has helped to stretch my creativity and to get comfortable doing artsy things again. I so readily painted as a child all the way through college until I stop abruptly. When, I learned what happens to an undeveloped creative soul when it comes into contact with a wounded talented artist. (Spoiler alert) It gets smashed.

Sunday mornings are my solo time when I look back on the week and get ready creatively for the next. It is often the time I have to do my longest stretch of journaling and to do some painting as well. As I prepared to paint an animal from last night’s dream - crocodile, I realized that I have been relying on external images to work off of instead of using my own mind’s images.

For example, with both the plover and the owl, I googled images to find one that match my recall of it from the dream. Only then did I sketch and paint it. I thought this was the ‘right’ way to do it and I guess, in many ways it is/was. And, also, because I saw it as ‘right’ was a sure sign to investigate that belief deeper.

In this awareness though, I understood that my paintings have ALWAYS been copies of images and other people’s work. In high school art class, it was a book of Bob Ross, perhaps not shocking to many of you who know me well. I love me a good landscape. But mostly it is from pictures and photographs of things – moments, animals, landscapes, and the like. Side note: I also know that this is super just fine and good and I will still use this method.  

The issue for me today is that I’ve been using other images as a crutch for creativity and a block to my own imagination/imagery/style. Ohhhhhh, well, looky there.

I needed my paintings to be accurate – It became an issue of correctness or perfectionism.

I needed them to look like what a/an ________ looked like in real life.

When I asked the deeper WHY I needed this accuracy – it was to make sure others couldn’t criticize it for not being right. I mean, I felt that I was already being raw and vulnerable enough to put my paintings out there on social media – to say, “see, look I’m sharing my creativity even though I am not a professional artist.”

I wanted to create space and validation for others that art didn’t have to look a specific way, but I was still holding on to the limiting belief, that while I could do art without some mythical great talent, I could NOT put out art that wasn’t realistically accurate. And that in doing this, I could not trust my own images. Well, well, well, there you are, Perfectionism.  

When I think about ‘real’ artists (aka people paid for their art or holding some talent that I do not believe myself right now to have) I admire, they have their own style and take on realistic images. Such as my 6 year old daughter!

What I loved about her Plover painting was that she followed the googled image only to know what a Plover was and then she made the style and colors her own. Yea, she’s 6 and, honestly, I loved her take on it more than my own. Because I executed mine trying to do the details exactly as they were in the picture online versus, what she did which was: here’s the general concept, now how do I see it or want to present it. I learn so much from her! We all could look more at what children can teach us stiffled adults!

And I know this is my inner work lesson today because I’m so uncomfortable writing this that I’ve tried to get up now about 5 times in 30 minutes for no good reason.
This is how it typically goes, I start to shift to stand up….then I catch myself…
[inner dialogue]
“Nope, Tamara, you don’t need to walk to the kitchen,
because you already have coffee and water. You don’t need food.
Sit back down and face your issue.”
This is real. And happens every damn time I hit on something truthful for me that my brain would rather distract me because it thinks it’s protecting me, but it’s not, it’s protecting Ego.

(Smiles, as I sip coffee, oh, this kind of inner work feels so good and so uneasy…)

To wrap up, I painted this crocodile, or is it an alligator, from a dream last night without googling images first. Who knows how it would have looked differently if I had versus going from memory of what I think they look like.

The difference is I trusted myself and used my own inner landscape to craft it.

I did it to my satisfaction rather than a match to a picture. And ya know what, I love it.

So while I put it up on my dream bulletin board, what can you loosen from the grips of our dear friend, Perfectionism, a little bit this week?