The woman who asked me to "just do something abstract, it's easier"
Some woman at a dinner party last week, after I tell her I paint figurative work, she says "oh but abstract is so much easier, right? You don't have to worry about it looking like anything."
I did not say what I wanted to say. I said "no, abstraction is its own discipline" like a polite robot. But what I wanted to say is: try painting a hand that looks like a hand and then come talk to me about what's easy.
The disrespect is so casual. As if centuries of craft, of learning to see, of mixing a flesh tone that actually breathes, as if that's just the tedious part you get through before you're allowed to make real art.
Anyway I came home and scraped a canvas I'd been working on for weeks. Not because of her. But also a little because of her.
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oh god the hand thing is so real 😭 i'm a watercolor painter and i get the abstract thing too, "oh it's just colors, must be relaxing" like no actually i've been staring at this same wash for twenty minutes trying to get it to do what i want. figurative work is brutal in a way people don't see because the goal is for it to look effortless. like yeah sure come paint a hand that doesn't look like a deflated balloon and then tell me what's easy.
also i hate that we all become polite robots in those moments bc you can't exactly be like "actually you have no idea what you're talking about" at a dinner party without being the asshole. but the disrespect stays with you. the casual flattening of something you've spent years on.
The polite robot thing is the worst part. You walk away and the good line comes to you three hours later when you're washing dishes.
Watercolor is relentless though. One wrong move and it's just there, permanently. At least with paper I can tear it and start again. You can't undo water.
The worst is you know she thought she was being helpful. Like "oh you poor thing, struggling with all that difficult realism, why not just splash some paint around and call it a day."
And watercolor, I have a friend who works in it and the tension she carries the whole time she's painting, I see it. One brushload too wet and your highlight is gone forever. At least in oil I can scrape down and start over. There's something admirable about a medium that doesn't let you lie.
Exactly. The polite robot thing haunts me. I've replayed that conversation five times since, thinking of what I should have said.
And watercolor, mon Dieu. That medium doesn't forgive anything. A friend of mine works in it and the way she talks about timing, about the paper deciding, it sounds like taming a wild animal. The idea that it's "relaxing" because it's pretty colors... people see the result, not the fight to get there.