A few weeks ago I spoke at the Santa Rosa Art Association about the perils of being a perfectionist as an artist. If I’m honest, being a perfectionist when it comes to certain things is important. For example, if you are performing open heart surgery or are operating on my brain, I would hope you are the perfectionist vs the guy who thinks that leaving a piece of gauze in my skull is just how it goes sometimes.
For the most part, I’m talking about perfectionism in the sense that it can be debilitating. Where you encounter the following problems:
You can only start in ideal conditions.
You never feel like a piece is finished.
You constantly get creative block.
You have lots of works in progress, but not so much ready to sell.
You constantly dwell on past failures.
You compare yourself to other artists, or people.
You never show your works in progress to other people.
You are losing motivation.
Being perfect is exhausting.
Enjoy the video of the talk. I mostly tell stories that frame the idea that trying to be perfect is silly, because I don’t believe there is such a thing. Let me know what you think?
