Tags
When I was nine years old my teacher was a quaint and quirky lady called Mrs Salt. Her classroom had a whole collection of sayings pinned to the walls, all intended to encourage her pupils to make the best of themselves. Sometimes we recited them aloud. The power of suggestion must have been great, for I still remember many of them – but the one that comes to mind most often is ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’
It’s a saying with a wide choice of application, but for me it mostly applies to artwork. In a quickfire world, it’s commonplace to turn your nose up at anything that doesn’t instantly deliver, to discard anything that isn’t perfect at the first try. But for the would-be artist most things don’t work straight away. It’s dispiriting to look at a failure, and easy to designate it ‘rubbish’ and hurl it into the nearest bin. But experience shows that it’s better to ask yourself both what’s wrong with it (‘everything’ isn’t an adequate answer!), and whether there are parts of it that actually do work quite well. Maybe the ‘good’ bits can be recycled, and a better way found to treat the ‘bad’ bits.
That’s the learning process, of course – problem solving and re-thinking – and it works for any sort of creative activity. It may take a few tries to get it right. I was thinking about this the other day when my working space threatened to collapse under the sheer weight of bits of paper with scribbles, botched attempts, paintings tried in different colourways and irate notes to myself to keep my hands clean. I had to clear up, and was struck by how many false starts there were for each of my little paintings before I was happy with the result. In an instant world, it’s a slow process, a reminder that creativity takes time and thought and puzzling out. There’s no rushing it, not really. Perhaps I should take a leaf from my old teacher’s book, and pin a notice on the wall, a plea for patience next time one of my artworks goes awry: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’.