The Genius of Done

So The Mister isn't really in my universe of creativity. He supports it and likes it and cheers it on but he isn't an active creator of art. This last weekend, I decided it would be fun to invite him into the studio for a date night where I could get him to enter my universe a bit more, as I handed him paints and canvases and the license to let go and let the paint do its thing.

When he looked at the blank white canvases, I asked him what he was feeling and he said "I'm afraid that I'll waste the canvases." Not a surprising reaction, right? What is it that makes us feel that we'll waste the canvas, the paper, the wood, the fabric with our expressions of creativity?

Thankfully, he did let go and started having great fun with the process.

And right when I was stepping onto my soapbox about being careful not to fall in love too fast with your painting too early in the process, I could see that he had. This piece below, which he had been working on horizontally ... as soon as he turned it so that it was vertical, he asked me if I saw the elephant. And I said yes. And though it was only his second or third layer of paint on this canvas, he declared it done.

As I looked at it, and as I pondered all that I had learned and become a preacher of ... about how it takes many layers for a painting to be completed, and how you shouldn't fall in love too fast ... I agreed with him that it was done. I did see the elephant. Perfectly perfect. And so cute.

There's a second canvas that he worked on that night. And I worked on two. All three of these need much more work.

Far from done.

Comments

[pam]

super cute date night idea! maybe studio crescendoh should host couples date nights...