More Painting, Less Frustration with Catherine Rains
No one wants to clean their room, right?
But Catherine Rains (Ep85) says your space’s messiness may be making it harder to paint. Here’s what to do about it.
Painting creates a lot of… stuff. And artist Catherine Rains, as a mixed media artist, is an expert in the field.
But Rains says all those creative objects can cause two serious problems:
First, it will create physical obstacles in your space.
Maybe that’s a pile of half finished pieces you have to move from your work space every time you come in. Or your closed palette sitting on top of gessoed boards you keep hitting with your elbow.
This build up makes it physically harder to get to your work.
Second, it makes a project mentally harder.
Why?
Disorganization often requires remaking decisions. Which tires you out.
For example, let’s say you’ve decided on 20 papers for a project. But because there are papers everywhere, they get mixed in with other papers.
Now you have to go back in and select papers again.
Or maybe you’ve decided on the brush you’ll use. You put it back in a jar of 20 other brushes, and now you have to hunt for it again.
These may seem small as individual issues. But they add up. So much so that Rains realized, she was painting less AND getting frustrated more. She had to do something. Two things in fact.
First, she organized her process into steps. One of those steps is choosing her papers. After she chooses her papers, she takes the time to put every single other piece of paper away.
This ensures that she’s moving forward with just what she’ll use.
Second, she’s built an official clean up stage at the end of a series.
She makes the last mark. She sets the collages to dry. She resets the space completely.
She refiles papers back into the flat drawer file. She puts away her paints. Washes any brushes she needs to.
The space is back to a clean starting point. Rains now has the space to create (and feel good about creating) the next series.
Put it to Practice:
Your physical space is part of your process.
At best, a messy space may cause some frustration. At worst it may ruin a painting session or whole project.
If you’re frustrated in your studio, do an environment check. It may not have anything to do with your painting and everything to do with the mess around your painting.
Look at your process. Are there places you could lower the amount of stuff in front of you?
For example, have two brush jars. One holds all your brushes. One holds just the brushes you plan to use for this painting. Once you know which brushes you’re using, put all the other brushes away.
Next, work to build a space reset (or resets) into your process. It might be something as small as putting your paints back on the same space on a shelf after you finish a painting.
This doesn't have to be a massive studio reorg. You might find that even just adding 2 to 5 minutes of reset at the end of a session will make it physically (and psychologically) easier to get back into your space the next session.