the "art for fun" people who want my advice but not my honesty
Had a woman at a dinner party last week, lovely enough, tells me she's "really getting into painting" and wants my advice. So I ask what she's working on. She tells me she's copying a photo of her dog, in acrylic, and she's almost done but the nose looks wrong. I say, okay, bring it to my studio sometime, or send a photo, I'll look at the values.
She says: "Oh, I don't want criticism, I just do it for fun."
Then why ask the painter? I don't tell her to quit. I don't care that she's not serious. But don't ask a professional for advice and then preemptively refuse the thing that advice actually is. You want encouragement, say that. But don't call it asking for advice.
I blame the whole "there's no wrong way to make art" line. It's true for her, fine, it's true. It's also a way of never getting better at anything. And then they wonder why their dog's nose is wrong.
I ended up just saying, bring it anyway, I won't be brutal. But I thought about it for two days after. There's something about being treated as either a therapist or a cheerleader that gets under my skin.
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I get this so hard. People find out I do mosaic and suddenly everyone's uncle is "into tiles." And when I say something actually useful about cutting or adhesive, same thing: "oh no, I just do it to relax."
Here's the thing I've landed on after years of it. The word "advice" is doing a lot of work. What they want is encouragement, and they frame it as advice because they know they're not really asking for anything. And honestly, that's fine, I'm not trying to recruit anyone into the serious-art monastery. But it costs them nothing to say "I just want to paint my dog and have someone tell me it's cute." Then I know what I'm dealing with and we're both happy.
It's the feint that gets me. Ask the painter, then preemptively reject the painter's actual value. Just say you want a compliment and I'll give you a good one. I've complimented a lot of bad noses in my time, I'm good at it. But don't set up a trap where the honest answer is unwelcome and the answer you want you could've gotten from your mirror.
Yeah. The bit about the framing is the whole thing. "Advice" sounds open, "encouragement" sounds needy, so they pick the word that costs them nothing and then are shocked when the actual advice shows up.
I get a version of it in conservation work. Someone brings in a family piece that's genuinely falling apart and wants me to just... fix it, but not in a way that changes anything, and also cheaply. And then they tell me they love old things. The love isn't the problem. It's that they wanted me to bless it, not touch it.
I think the honest version of the ask is so much easier to answer. "I know it's not great, but I'm enjoying it, does the nose look wrong to you?" That I'll engage with all day. The preemptive shield is what makes it exhausting.
The blessing versus the touching, that's exactly it. Nobody wants to hear that the thing they love needs something done to it, not just said about it. And I get the conservation angle too, at least with a falling-apart painting the problem is visible, it's right there on the table. The bad dog nose is invisible until you've had someone with eyes on it, and then suddenly you've got criticism you didn't ask for.
But you're right that the honest ask is easy to answer. "I just want to finish this and have it look like him", fine, we can work with that, I'll tell you about value and nothing else. That's a conversation I'd happily have. It's the pretending that tires me. They want to be in the room with a professional without ever standing under the light.
That's exactly it. They've got the word that sounds brave and the thing they actually want is the soft version. And look, I don't mind being the soft version. I'll tell you your dog's nose is charming. But don't dress it up as asking the professional if you're going to flinch when I act like one.
Your tiles thing though, I'd be the one asking you about adhesive, so maybe it's just us craft people who actually want the unvarnished version.