Perfectionism

As I'm sure many creative people have experienced, getting stuck in one's perfectionism can be sadly crippling.  I have taken several "process art" workshops, all of which were highly beneficial and wonderfully freeing - but the lessons never seem to "stick".  The bogeyman in my head always seems to have something to say about the end product, which sometimes keeps me from even getting started on a project, let alone finishing it.  I know how pleasurable the creative process can be, and most of the time I embrace it fully when I am in the midst of it, but letting go of the end product and just letting it be what it is continues to be a huge stumbling block.

Last year I started this oil painting (my first) at the encouragement of a dear friend of mine who is a very talented artist.  I was really intimidated by the medium (which is vastly different from anything I'm used to) and had a hard time finding the fun in it.  Then I did finally find the fun and got the painting mostly finished - and then the perfectionism set in.  It didn't turn out the way I had pictured it in my head (at all), and I didn't know how to "fix" it, so I let it sit. And sit.  And sit.  And then started telling myself that I really needed to finish it before I could start any other artistic projects, and because I couldn't figure out *how* to finish it, I just denied myself a lot of creativity.   How stupid is that?

Last night I decided that this was NOT going to be a project I wanted to have blocking my creativity for one more minute, so I finished it.  I still don't like the way it turned out, but I am going to let it go and move on to the next thing and hope that I have learned *something* from this.

Perfectionism - go find yourself a brain surgeon to latch onto, and leave me the hell alone!