All And Nothing
The riskiness of painting really big lines
The line I paint here is glitchier than I want, less even, less strong. Maybe you can see my pain in it, and my ease.
When performance anxiety hits, people will make work that is estimated to be only 60% as good as their practice work, work they make when they are alone with no expectations, instead of the times when this is it, and you have to do it right - now, this one time. The All Or Nothing time.
I like to escape those maladaptive thought clusters of performance anxiety by repeating and repeating the lines I paint over and over. Eventually the ‘practice’ lines and the ‘performed’, final lines blur into a single state of presence in my mind.
First I paint the same up-then-down line on smaller, cheaper pieces of paper. Try and make each one as perfect as I can, no matter what paper it is on, no matter what size. Then move up paper size, making more and more until the moments flow into one another and everything in my world is just the paper, the brush, the ink.
And I have another tactic for sidestepping performance anxiety that I use when I am about to paint a really large line for a competition or an exhibition. A different repetition tactic.
Large lines are maps of risk. A wobble or hesitation or stumble and an entire roll of paper is off to the recycling. But more than that, more important than the risk of wasting the materials, wasting my time and energy is the risk of one line as a piece of art. This is just one line. And I want it to take up a massive amount of space. And I want to ask a lot of money for it too. And everything can go wrong.
So my cheat, my usual way of making it past the choke inducing thought “this is it, it’s all or nothing in these next three minutes I have with the enormous piece of paper and this ink and this brush and my flawed, inadequate self” is repetition. I aim to paint four lines at the full scale, so I know for sure none of these lines is It, the all or nothing line. There is another chance to get it right, and that chance is in the editing. The choosing of which of those four lines is going to be good enough to make it to the exhibition. This neatly separates that weight of performance anxiety from the moment of action. Now it is delegated to editing time. And it is an effective way of dealing with performance anxiety - making sure you are not judging yourself while you are making. Let judging have it’s own, seperate time.
This line at the top of this post, White #3.4.1: Pain & Ease is different. It is 2.5 meters long and is my entry to New Zealand’s top drawing prize, The Parkin Prize.
Because I have had long covid for a year (I am better now- it’s an interesting story and worth it’s own post later). So I am shocked by how stiff and weak my body is after 12 months of being barely able to move. Long COVID has been followed by frozen shoulder, horribly debilitating for an artist. My right arm can only move a few degrees in any direction. Painting these big lines is a full body practice used to involve doing hours of hot yoga as essential to my art, to giving me control over the smooth waves of the brush.
But now I can hardly lean over the paper. Moving the heavy boards and paper rolls just to set up the space means I have to lie down for hours. I have done some warm up lines but there is no way I have enough strength in me to set up the paper for four full scale lines, never mind actually painting them.
So my option is to paint just one line and decide to submit that, no matter what.
I am using a different method of dealing with performance anxiety. That is really just living with who I am now, and accepting what my body can make now, in its very very flawed way. Stepping away from judging myself and from judging the line I paint.
One white line only
In the video of myself painting, I can see myself shuffling lumpily where I used to glide. I can see my muscles in my bad arm bunched up and rigidly curled as I drag the brush.
So it is a different kind of being in the moment I am using now. It is not the transcendent type of being in the moment I look for, I want, I love. But it is an embodied being in the moment - being where I am now, in an older, sicker body. A flawed and finite body. Being where I am now - and not loving it - but accepting it. All and nothing.
Some people can just make emotions so clearly felt through their voice, and Steve Marriot was one of those people. Does it seems like there were more of those singers in the sixties? Or is it just me? Here is All or Nothing by The Small Faces. such a good song.
What a fascinating process and reflection upon it. The way that you and the line are one. The immediacy of the line’s reflection of your current limitations. I am very moved by this
‘Large lines are maps of risk.’ Oh Helen, what an evocative read. So often we try to control the outcome, to be perfect (guilty as charged) yet your story prompts me to say that the art, the artist and the soul of these works is in the imperfections. I’m sorry that the experience of making is now so much harder for you, but I’m glad that you persist, thank you.