There are few things worse than finally getting to start a project and then, when you sit down to do it, feeling as though you’re not up to the task.
Like many writers and artists, I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the number of ideas I have. This has been especially true as I’ve started painting (nearly) every day, thinking ahead and planning work more deliberately. When I worked mostly in watercolor, it was easy to have an idea and clear my schedule to work on it, and to finish it that day. Working in oil is not like that for me. It can be, and I probably should practice more alla prima (“at first attempt,” or basically, in one session). But so far my being accustomed to working in layers, and my stamina, means that my oil paintings take several sessions. And in between those sessions, I keep having ideas for new paintings.
In some ways, this is exciting. Having several paintings going at once means cycling through them, having something to share while something else is drying. I just finished one that will have to cure for several weeks before I varnish it, then dry again for weeks before I present it; but in the meantime I’ll be starting something new and I’ll be able to share the progress of that. But as the number of projects—as the number of ideas builds up, it begins to feel as if I’m stacking little bricks of inspiration into a wall around me. And by the time I have the freedom to start work on a painting or a manuscript I’ve been thinking about for awhile, a brick at the bottom of the wall, I begin to doubt whether I can pull it off—or out, as the metaphor goes—and the whole wall threatens to come tumbling down.
What is it that makes the stakes seem so terribly high? So what if the wall falls—the bricks will be fine, just stack them again. For me, as someone who needs to start selling things—manuscripts, paintings, commissions—the pressure is high to choose something to finish soon, to choose the right thing to finish soon, to choose the thing that will sell best to finish soon so that I can start earning money while finding the next right thing.
My goal for this year is to just try. To take opportunities, even if I think I’m not ready for them. To stop worrying so much about trying to time things right or line up my ducks just so, because no amount of finagling has thus far managed to appease my anxieties about my skills. In the meantime, my solution to managing the pressure to sell is to choose my projects based not on whether I think they’re the most marketable, but whether they’re the most inspiring to me, because—as I tell myself—that is where I’ll be able to do my best work, and my best work is what will be most marketable. Whether it sells or not, that’s another matter. Whether I’m proud of it, whether I love it; that is what’s up to me.