Yet another open letter.
November 8th, 2004 | by Scott Jennings |Dear No-Improv-Group-In-Particular,
If I wake up tomorrow and decide that I’d like to be a painter, I suppose I’d have two basic options.
I could find a local school and enroll in an art class. I’d probably be introduced immediately to a bunch of people like me, who woke up and felt the need to express themselves through painting, and didn’t quite know where to turn. We’d sit together in a big studio, I’ll bet, and a teacher would come in and talk to us for a few minutes about how awesome painting is. And then I’m quite certain that we’d be assigned some brushes and canvas and paint, and we’d get started.
The teacher would probably introduce us to a few basic techniques, and the class would work to mimic them. You know, just to get used to how it feels to have a brush in your hand and drag paint across a canvas. I’m sure these basic techniques have names, but since I’m not a painter, I don’t know them. But I’ll bet that it boils down to taking the time and the care to learn what happens when you do different things on the canvas. You try and you fail and you learn by doing. There’s not much knowledge to be transferred intellectually, you know, I’m quite certain that the only way to learn to paint is by actually painting.
From there, we’ll probably paint some bowls of fruit and some trees and maybe, if we’re lucky, some dude’s wang. And after a bit of this, it might start to feel tiresome — I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to paint pears and wangs, I wanted to express myself. And why the fuck is this teacher criticizing my pears to begin with? I don’t care about pears. The world is waiting for my artistic contribution, and I’m stuck here in a room with a dozen other jags working to produce identical wang paintings. Well, fuck that.
My second basic option is starting to look pretty appealing: fuck the first option. Maybe I’ll wake up and go to an art supplies store and get what I need and take it back to my apartment. I’ll open the blinds and get some sunlight in there and fire up my iPod and get to work on my masterpiece, Guernica 2K4. Sure, my masterpiece probably won’t be a shining example of all those rules that teacher was trying to tie me to, but hey, this is painting. I see the paint, I see the canvas, I put the paint on the canvas and I’m painting. I figure it’ll take most of the afternoon to finish, then I’ll let it dry while I call all my friends over for the big unveiling/cookout.
Naturally, my friends will absolutely adore my painting, because I’m an interesting and unique individual with friends who appreciate everything that makes me absolutely magnetic. They will be supportive. My male friends will confess their jealousy at my “balls,” and my female friends will coo and flirt and insist that I paint something for their bedrooms. My wang will be rock-hard.
Next week, I’ll unveil my next masterpiece, Fallujah (Through The Eyes Of A Child), and I’ll serve hamburgers again. Not as many people will be able to make it out, you know, scheduling conflicts and the like. And not as many people will “get” this painting, even though I’m honestly expressing myself by putting paint on canvas in new and interesting ways.
The week after that, only a few people will make it out for the unveiling of Untitled, But On Purpose. At least I’ll know who my true friends are: the ones who come out and support me in my creative expression and don’t make lame excuses.
Maybe that first option had more advantages that I realized. Perhaps the benefits of walking before I run and learning the rules and why they’re the rules before I break them ought not to be dismissed so quickly. Perhaps becoming a part of a collaborative and supportive network of artists will allow me to inspire and be inspired. Perhaps my mastery of these basic techniques that I found tedious and boring will allow me to make the most of the paint I put on the canvas and allow me to express myself more effectively and bring my art to places I couldn’t imagine when I woke up with the need to become a painter. Perhaps there’s more to painting than just putting paint onto a canvas, just as there’s more to improv than standing onstage without a script.
I’m sure there were a few painters who achieved a great deal of success while completely isolated from the artistic community, but why would I handicap myself like that? Perhaps I could name a few awesome painters who never learned fundamentals as the teachers would teach them, but I’d fail to name millions who tried that road and failed. I want to learn from my fellow artists and see what they have contributed to this world. And while much of their teaching and advice will seem contradictory or counter-intuitive, eventually, as I keep painting, I will internalize and assimilate what works for me.
And once I put in that work and stop putting paint onto canvas and become a painter, I will reap rewards far in excess of what I thought possible when I started my journey. No matter how much fun I was having just throwing color on a flat surface to see what stuck, I know that if I want to grow and be fulfilled and have an audience follow me, I need to seek out opportunities to learn, not shut myself away into an echo chamber. The road to my success leads out into the world, straight into the challenges to my way of thinking. Welcome those challenges.
Your friend,
Scott Jennings
