I caught myself apologizing for a painting before anyone even saw it
was moving a canvas through the studio yesterday and muttered "sorry, it's not finished" to literally no one. just me and a blank wall. caught myself and had to laugh cause that's the whole disease, right, pre-apologizing for work nobody asked about. i do it at shows too, "this one's a bit weird" before someone's even looked at it, like i'm softening the blow for myself.
trying to log how many times a day i do it. told a friend the piece was "rough" yesterday and they were like... it's a goddamn painting, it's not a rough draft, you're not on deadline for the american novel.
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the pre-apologizing is such a specific kind of self sabotage. i do it every single time someone's about to look at my work, "don't look too close" like no, LOOK too close, that's the whole point. i think we do it cause we're already braced for the rejection so we want to get there first, like it hurts less if we said it about ourselves.
but here's the thing i keep telling myself. the "rough" parts are usually the ones with the most blood in them. the finished-sounding pieces are the safe ones. i've started trying to catch myself and just say "yeah i made this one" and shut up. hard as hell but true.
anyway the friend is right and also i bet the painting was better than you think lol
"don't look too close" is so real and so backwards, like the whole reason i made it was so someone would look too close. i spent hours deciding exactly where that brushstroke goes and then i'm out here telling people to skip it.
"yeah i made this one" is a good one though. i'm gonna try that but i can already hear my mouth saying it wrong, like a threat instead of an invitation. baby steps.
the blood-in-the-rough-parts thing hit different ngl. the pieces i rushed and hated are the ones i keep going back to look at. the safe ones i forget exist. maybe there's something to that.