Abandon your Comfort Zone
One of the longest journeys, not just in art, but in all walks of life, is finding a place that feels like home. Finding that space that you’re familiar with, that space that you know exactly how to fill. It’s a long and difficult road. In painting, I found that space only a couple years ago. That point where I finally felt like I knew what I was doing, and how to achieve the goals I was aiming for. In life, though I still feel a long way off from getting there, that space is revealing it’s self more and more each day. As an artist, it’s the place where you finally FEEL like an artist. As a person, it’s a place where you can, at last, take a deep breath and a long look at yourself. It’s a wonderful place to stay for a while. So find your comfort zone. And once you’ve found it, leave it behind.
I know that’s a tough thing to do. I mean, the name says it all: comfort zone. It’s cozy there. But anything good grows stale after long. A good friend of mine told me that happiness is novelty, and I believe that as much as i believe that I’m sitting here writing this right now (which is debatable in it’s own right, but that’s a conversation for another time). Happiness can be found in familiarity, sure. But when the new and interesting stops knocking on your door, the familiar has a tendency of dragging you down. Comfort is good, for a while. But when it over stays it’s welcome, comfort becomes a cage. It will hold you back in ways that you don’t even realize until you decide to break out.
I realized this for the first time a few years ago, in my studio. This was when I lived in Saint Albans, VT, and spent long nights in the back room of a dark coffee shop with brushes in hand. I had been painting for a few years by then, and I had finally gotten past the point of fighting the paint. I felt like I knew how to get paint onto a canvas, how to control it instead of wrestle with it. (for those that don’t know, oil paint is notoriously difficult for beginners, and expensive to waste, which is why many oil painters start in acrylic). For a short stint, it was pretty fantastic, but after a couple dozen paintings like this, I hit a brick wall. it lost it’s flair. The challenge that had driven me all the way to that point died, and suddenly, I was painting for the sake of painting instead of the joy of it. That was, of course, me being big headed. When I look back at those pieces now, it’s hard not to laugh at myself for thinking I had it down. But the truth is, I thought I had.
And then I started looking at the Masters. At the time it was mostly portrait painters: Rembrandt, Vermeer, and so on. But I have never been so moved by a portrait as I was when I first saw the work of John Singer Sargent. The art folk out there might be surprised to find out that I was 22 when that happened, but it rocked me. Suddenly I realized, for the first time, what a portrait could be. Colors so rich and true to life not even a photograph could compare. Beautiful, broad brush work that, from a distance, would have you convinced that you were looking at a person in the flesh, but up close and personal become and impressionistic jigsaw of colors and strokes. I had never seen anything like it, and for the first time I realized that my comfort zone had been lying to me. I realized that I had barely scratched the surface, and I promised myself in that moment, that I would never be so foolish to think I had hit a ceiling again. Art is an uphill race, and if you do it right, you never cross the finish line.
I’ve been rediscovering this notion of abandoning my comfort zone in my recent endeavors as a small business owner. I thought that being a professional artist was all about the painting, and it’s not. You can read more about that in my previous blog post, but long story short, a lot of the business side of painting involves doing things that I have never done before. It’s forced me to talk about myself, and be comfortable in my skin. It’s forced me to become financially responsible, to organize myself, To schedule my time more wisely. I still have a long way to go in all of those regards, but I’m getting there, and it has improved every aspect of my life, not just my business. The funny thing is, before I got to where I’m at now, I dreaded it. I was so afraid of that change, but it was exactly what I needed.
So spend your stint in your comfort zone, bask in it while you can, but never convince yourself that you should stay there. Some of the best things in life are right over the horizon, so run toward it with everything you’ve got. I’m not suggesting you leave behind everything that you love, or that you convince yourself that you will never have what you want. You’ll pick things up along the way, just remember that the important things wont catch you like a snare, they’ll follow you to the end. Don’t be afraid to waste the paint. Bring life to the idea that intimidates you.