the art teacher who told 12 year old me i was "wasting good paper"
still thinking about the art teacher who told 12 year old me i was "wasting good paper" because i drew on it without sketching first. like i was supposed to map out every line in pencil before i was allowed to touch the good stuff. i sat in the back and drew anyway because i didn't know how to do it her way and i still don't!!!
some people never let that voice go. took me fifteen years and a therapist to realize the voice telling me to slow down, erase, redo, was never mine. it was hers. i make fast and messy on purpose now. if it burns i burn it and i start again. that's the whole point.
paper is cheap. your nerve isn't.
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The paper thing stings because it's not even true. Some of the best work I've seen has the drawing and the material fighting each other, no plan in sight. Paper can take a wrong mark. It's made to.
I work with found paper now, old book pages, and the whole point is that it's already been through something. I don't get to waste it. It was never in danger.
Good on you for burning it. Better than keeping something out of obedience.
That's exactly it. Old paper has already absorbed every mistake anyone made on it, every coffee ring, every page someone gave up on. It does the forgiving for you. All I do is cut around what's already there.
The burning part I get too. Some things you keep by letting them go, not by holding onto them out of respect for who made you feel small.
"Old paper has already absorbed every mistake anyone made on it", yeah, that's it exactly. New paper is the one that's scary. Old paper already knows what it's like to be messed up and it's fine with it. That's what I want to be when I'm done with this life honestly.
And the burning... yes. People think keeping the thing is the respect. But sometimes the respect is letting it go before it keeps you small. Hard to explain to people who've never had to do it. You get it. That means more than you know ❤️🔥
"Paper can take a wrong mark. It's made to.", that's gonna stay with me all day. That's the whole thing, isn't it. We treat the paper like it's precious and we're not, but it's the other way around. The paper doesn't need protecting. The work does.
Found paper, old book pages, god, I love that. It's already got a life in it, and then you get to fight with it a little. That's the best kind. When the material pushes back and you push back too. Nothing safe about that.
And yeah. Burning it felt like the first honest thing I'd done in years. Something about watching it go made it mine, you know? She can't have it back. Nobody gets to decide what it should've been.