I am reading a book called Art and Fear, Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. The book includes an interesting section about perfectionism.
The co-authors tell the story about a teacher that announced that he was going to divide the class into two groups. One group would be graded on quantity, and one would be graded on quality. The grading process was simple. For the quantity group, its performance would be measured by weight; 50 lbs equaled an “A”, forty pounds equaled a “B” and so forth. Now, the quality group only could do one ceramic. It had to be their best work and their grade would be determined by the quality of that single piece.
When it came time to grade the groups, while the quantity group was churning out the ceramics and learning from their mistakes, the quality group was theorizing, not doing, and had precious little to show for their effort. All that they had was “grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay”.
Ultimately, good work is not synonymous with perfect work. “Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error.” So, inevitably our work will be flawed and looking for perfections is flawed.
There comes a time when we have to quit rationalizing and just do. No matter how much you think about doing, it is not doing. We can rationalize it isn’t good enough to do yet, or not the right time. But unless we start to bring this quantity of doing and to risk making mistakes, we cannot learn and grow.
This blog post was written by Janet Vanderhoof and originally appeared in her personal blog. Janet is a talented artist and poet. She is the mother of a Down’s Syndrome child, whom she describes as one of her wonderful life teachers. She can be followed on Twitter here.
