Failure or Determination? 1995
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
–Samuel Johnson, The Prince of Abissinia (1775)
The hormone therapy I have undergoing has been working very well in keeping my cancer at bay, thankfully. However, there are aspects of its side effects that have hit me harder than I anticipated. I don’t want to go into them in any detail here except to say that they sometimes have a very depressing effect. The last couple of days have been like that leaving me somewhat glum and sullen. Having gone through several bouts of depression in my life, I know it’s a waiting game, that it should soon pass.
The crows come and the crows go.
But that advice to wait it out sometimes seems like lip service when you’re wallowing around in the dark. But I will wait it out. All I can do right now.
That being said, let’s talk about failure.
Above is an old piece that I never thought I’d share here. Or anywhere. It is untitled, as it well should be, and is from 1995. I consider it an abject failure and sometimes wonder why I keep it around still. It serves no obvious purpose other than to remind me of its failure.
It stemmed from an idea. A freaking idea. I have written and spoken about how my best work is organic and stems from our intuition and subconscious thought. About how we are just not that damn smart and when we try to force an idea into a tangible reality we inevitably botch it up. It ends being stiff and lifeless.
Maybe that just applies to me. I don’t know. But that whole thought in my case may well stem from this piece though there are other spectacular failures that you will never see. I am only showing this ne as an object lesson.
My “idea” was that the painted image should have a painted frame within the picture itself. It would resemble stained glass and add a new aspect pf color to the image. It hurts my head to even think about it now.
Nothing about this painting and the idea works. The inner painting is flat and dull to begin with. Uninspired. The painted frame, while I like the range of colors in it, is awkward and doesn’t jibe at all with the inner image. There is a feeling of cheap novelty in it that bugs the hell out me.
There’s more I could criticize but let’s just say that it just doesn’t work for me.
But over the years when I have gone back through the old work and come across this piece, I find myself amazed that I stuck with it and finished it. I knew even as I painted it that it was not working but I persisted with it for some unknown reason, working many more hours on it than it deserved.
Maybe I thought that I owed my “idea” everything I could give it. That to not finish would be a failure of character.
A failure of determination.
So, when I look at this now, I still cringe at the evidence of my failure in the painting and in bringing my “idea” to a successful end. But there is also a bit of pride in that the determination I displayed in completing it. There was obviously a lesson learned in it somewhere.
Maybe I am putting lipstick on a pig here. I don’t know.
I guess if you’re going to keep a pig in your studio, you try to make it as attractive as possible.
In conclusion, I look at this now and see it as a failure as a painting and an “idea” but see it as a prime example of determined effort. And on days like today, I need to be reminded of that type of determination. I think we all need that every so often.
Here’s a song that is kind of about failure and determination. This is Bad Day from Daniel Powter.