It’s a rainy Saturday here in Boston and there were only four of us drawing today. Our goal was to work on getting a little more abstract. Realism is always interpretive anyway and we’re all interested in breaking free of its constraints. I’m really always interested in exploring. I think that’s what a class is for and, with luck, we get ideas and experience to further our art in whatever way we want to continue. The thing that grabs one artist is not necessarily what grabs another so it’s good to try things out, to really experience them as a way of coming to know who you are as an artist and even as a person.

So we folded our paper in half and drew from a photograph of flowers on the top half with the intention of simplifying. In other words, we tried to leave some of the detail out, to leave some of our lines open, to keep shading to a minimum. The object is clear but the rendering is light. That done, I asked the class to then open the paper and complete the picture using something from the first image but not all. I think the results were really interesting.

Sometimes it’s a question of coming in closer, or reversing dark and light, or just doing lines. In every case, what emerged was more interesting because it allowed the viewer to engage with the image by trying to find meaning in it though not literal meaning. I think that art in a pure form like this is energy. Depending what we do we can create a field of energy in our work—a field of lightness, or tranquility or excitement, all kinds of things. It’s the viewer’s job to watch themselves and their response to the piece at the same time as viewing the art itself.

Art can take us out of our small minds and into our big, expansive ones. So even if it is just a practice it is a fine, fine thing to do. We confront ourselves even when we are focused on something outside of ourselves. We see the ways we inhibit ourselves and the ways we begin to free ourselves. And, very often, we see the ways in which we judge ourselves and our work. I think this is why it’s so hard to break free in art—we’re groomed from our first day in school to perform the ‘right’ way, to get ‘good’ grades, to ’succeed.’

I called this class ‘The Mistakes Class’ because I really want us to make mistakes, to go that far out. Luckily I made one myself today. I tried something and just couldn’t find anywhere to go with it. So, it was on to something else. I can’t even say it was a mistake I learned from—it was just something that didn’t work. But the next piece I did really did work and I couldn’t have done it without going way too far in a fruitless direction first.

I’m still a bit pooped from our time in San Francisco, have to say. But so many wondrous things seem to be happening that are leading in good directions. I’m still very inspired by the Art in the City symposium at Harvard a couple of weeks ago. It makes me think how much of art and literature in the last part of the twentieth century was invested in form in an intellectual way for its own refinement and sake. How little art and literature in the recent past has looked out beyond the small ego self. This is just a thought but it seemed we had our heads in the sand as our planet slid into dilemmas we ignored—overpopulation, the burning of fossil fuels and their effects, extreme poverty, pollution and illness. Making another drawing is not going to solve these problems but I think it can lead us to our brave, creative selves where we are able to look both inwards and outwards and take good action in the world. Maybe it’s all perfect as the Buddha said but I hope artists are going to be part of the solutions we need now to create. More on this soon and I’d love to hear your thoughts too. But now I’m going to cook dinner and try to get back on east coast time!