Studio research: Habits

I frequently see in myself and my students specific behavior cycles with projects that I wanted to make a visual about. My ability to teach myself how to push through burnout will help me when I start adjuncting. Academia can feel like a pressure cooker. You feel the heat of expectations within yourself, peers, and professors. Not meeting them makes it feel bigger emotionally and accelerates straight toward burnout. With art school, it can be hard to keep that fire for projects alive when the burnout hits.

Frustration is normal. The best case scenario with art school is over time and your studies, you build a muscle of skills that ensure that you push THROUGH frustration and see your project through. But for younger students, when frustration hits, it feels large, emotive and like they can do nothing right. I know this to be true because it’s been my experience too. Sometimes the feeling is so overwhelming that people drop out of school. I know this because prior to grad school, I dropped out of school 4 times.

I think something that works in my studio practice and is listed above is taking space away from the work. In the past, I have covered up paintings, or made them face the wall. Then I actually focus on resting. What’s hard is I tend to feel guilt for needing to rest.

In my studies, I learned different ways that historical painters took time away from their work in order to have “fresh eyes” when they come back to it. Turning works towards the wall is something I learned from Caravaggio. His technique was to turn paintings toward the wall so they aren’t facing him anymore and after a period of time passes, he would have someone come into his studio to turn the works toward him while he stands with a pen and paper and rapidly writes down everything he wants to change about it and what he observes about it in general. And now. there’s a plan to push past where a work is left off. I find this technique to work well.

Additionally, mindset matters, I think people get stuck because of expectations of how a piece is “supposed” to look deters them from exploring and allowing a piece to be what it is. The ability to catch the way you think about your work is something I personally have been working on. When I catch myself feeling like I’m not doing enough, I have to pause and recognize that art calls me to slow down. Be intentional, explore, and try different methods with pieces, and above all else, detach from the idea that a piece is going to be the best you’ve ever done and that you’ll never make something like it again. It hinders students from being comfortable with erasing things and starting over again.