One of the things I love and admire so much about my “professional” mushroom-foraging friends is the fact that they have really leaned into trusting themselves. They fully trust in their ability to study the correct information and to apply it out in the world. Any kind of foraging is serious; there are quite a few species of plants that will literally kill you if you ingest it. Some species have look-alikes so a forager really needs to be able to expertly differentiate between them. For those who have been hunting and gathering in the wild for many years, often under the tutelage of an elder expert, intuition may also play a role.
And while art-making isn’t as high stakes as eating a wild mushroom, sometimes it can feel just as terrifying to “trust the process” when you don’t have a clue where your work is going or how you’ll get it where you want it to be.
Sometimes we start a work with an idea of it in the back of our minds —but then, the work begins to exert itself and it ends up moving in another direction! It’s in that “ugly duckling” stage where it feels terrible. We begin to second-guess ourselves and our abilities which we know are solid. Fear sets in and we want to quit, set the work aside, ….maybe get back to it later.
Or, we can forge ahead and trust that it will work out. To have it “work out” is to allow the art to have a voice in its evolution even if it’s one you didn’t expect.
Sometimes our ambitions make a big leap over and past our current skill sets and we find ourselves bashing up against a shift in our style. Style is, after all, where our ambitions belly up to our current skill set. If the work we were doing previously is less interesting than the current vision, we’ll struggle to bring our new idea into fruition. Our new style feels vulnerable and tentative so we doubt ourselves. We beat up our sweet teddy bears trying to reach a level of impossible, immediate perfection.
Or, we can endure and have patience with ourselves. We can allow ourselves to be vulnerable as we create and the work will speak.
And— ugh, worse, sometimes a well-meaning observer makes a comment about the unfinished piece and their opinion sticks a little too much in our mind. We spin out with our thoughts and begin to self-censor and lose the original thread which tied the work together. We wonder if it’s good or if it sucks ~and it’s not even finished! We forget to ask ourselves what biases this observer may have and if their goals and desires are the same as ours -or if they’re at odds. Are they helping us get to our goal, or are they serving their own needs? Are they hoping that by expressing their opinion they can change the outcome of our work and profit from it?
Or, we can be uninterested in anyone’s opinion except our own ~ at least until the work is finished. Remember, we are our art’s first and primary audience member and are the sole reason our art exists. Any other person will bring their interpretation to the art when it is done. Trust in finishing it if that’s what you desire.
As children we’re asked to have faith in gods, demons, and unearthly estates as if that’s no big deal— but we’re not often taught to have faith in ourselves and to trust in our own abilities. The good news is that, with practice, it’s a skill which can be developed.
Our job as Artists: to grow and to nurture our work. It’ll feed us later.