Jordan Kim collage paper art scissors glue

Making Bad Art is Good for You

Hello there friends, Have you ever found yourself in perfectionist paralysis? If you're anything like me, you find yourself there pretty often. You start creating something and pretty soon the gremlins in your head start offering their commentary. "That's not good enough." "Maybe you should just start over." "People won't like it." Bla bla bla... To be a creative, sometimes you just gotta push on through that fear of failing. For me, that often means... I risk making a lot of bad art to make good art. It's true whether you are an artist, a writer, a programmer or a chef. To get really good at something you have to be okay with making a lot of crappy work before (and ever after) you learn to make really great work. And the further along I get on my path, the more I realize that there is a lot of good that comes from making a lot of bad art. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0682/5426/9673/files/7149966049_9b7a43b2a9.jpg You get to practice acceptance of failure and imperfection - over and over and over again. And really, who doesn't need to learn those lessons a few million times? Being reminded of the beauty and wisdom found in our messy, imperfect selves is a message I need to hear again and again. Good art often grows from bad art. Just like flowers need some good manure to fuel their growth, I think good creations sometimes need some sh*tty art to build on too. I've often gotten about half way through making a piece and thought it was going nowhere only to be surprised that the whole thing turned around by making a couple changes. You just never know. But I do know you won't make any good art if you don't risk making some messes too. There's a lot of value in creating just for the sake of creating. Whether you (or others) deem your creations "good" or "bad" isn't nearly as valuable as the experience of creating them. At the risk of sounding "woo woo", I believe there is a shift that happens in your soul when you give it the freedom to create something. I can sit down in the studio having had a crummy morning and worrying about something, but after an hour or so of creating - even if all I made was an incoherent mess - I feel a thousand times better. All that time that I spent creating, my soul was processing and decompressing. Creating is a way of getting what's inside out in whatever form it comes out. And most of the time... The really good stuff is found in the process of accepting whatever you create. I'm learning to take it for what it is - however it turns out.
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