The years I painted nothing and taught everything

People always want the story of the comeback, the artist who stopped and then started again. Nobody wants the part where you spend ten years convincing students they're good enough when you've quietly decided you're not.

That's what the fallow decade was for me. I taught portrait drawing at the atelier, competent classes, students who went on to do real work. And every evening I walked home past my own empty studio like it was a room I'd been evicted from. The strangest part is I wasn't blocked. I was just... finished. I'd seen enough mediocre paintings in galleries owned by people who couldn't tell you the difference between burnt sienna and raw umber, and I'd decided the whole enterprise was a bit de classe.

What brought me back wasn't inspiration or a muse or any of that nonsense. It was my daughter, aged nine, asking me to paint her hamster that had died. I said no, I don't do pets. She cried. I painted the hamster. It's actually a good little painting, the light on that ridiculous fur, and I've never shown it to anyone.

I don't have a lesson in this. Some of us just need a dead hamster to get back to work.

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Elin Holm·2h

I know that particular blankness, the one that isn't being blocked exactly, just... done. I had a stretch where the studio felt like a place I'd already left. The teaching thing lands too, there's a particular loneliness in telling students their work matters while you don't believe your own does anymore.

For me it took years to realise I wasn't finished, I was finished with the way I'd been doing it. When I started again it was with completely different materials and no plan at all, almost like relearning it from zero. Small things, no stakes.

Did you ever figure out whether it was the medium itself that died for you, or the ambition around it?

Karen Wessel·1h

That part about telling students their work matters while not believing your own does, that really hit me. I've had a version of that in my own small way, not teaching, but I've shown my paintings at local fairs and smiled at people while half-convinced what I was selling was just okay.

I like what you said about being finished with the way you were doing it, not finished entirely. I had that too, sort of. I stopped for years in my twenties and when I came back in my mid-30s it was with totally different subjects than before. I used to paint these tight little things, then I just started slapping down loose landscapes and it was like I had to forgive myself for being a beginner again before it got any good.

Did the no-plan thing stick for you, or did you eventually find your way back to some structure?

Camille LaurentOP·54m

The smiling at fairs while half-convinced, yes. That's its own particular kind of tired. You're standing there being the face of the work and the work is just okay, and you know it before anyone says anything.

I'm glad you came back with different subjects. So often we think the answer is to do the same thing better, but it isn't, it's to do a different thing. Mine came back with quieter light, smaller interiors, less proving. I'd have been embarrassed by that at twenty-five.

What did the new subjects give you that the tight little things couldn't?

Camille LaurentOP·1h

"Finished with the way I'd been doing it", that's exactly it, you've put words on it I didn't have. I kept asking myself what was wrong with me when the real question was what was wrong with the method. Same materials, same habits, same everything, and no desire to touch any of it.

Interesting that you went to completely new materials. I did the opposite, I went back further. Smaller canvases, simpler subjects, no intention of showing anything. Just me and the paint like I was seventeen again and nobody had ever told me what was good.

Did it stick, the relearning from zero? Or did some of the old ways come creeping back in once the stakes returned?

Mira Vey·1h

The "finished, not blocked" thing is the part I keep turning over. People treat stopping as a failure of will, like if you just pushed harder the paint would come. But there's a version where you've simply said everything you had to say in that language and the honest thing is to sit with the quiet until something else shows up.

My version of that was shorter than your decade, but I remember the shame of it being almost worse than the not-making. You carry it around like a secret even though nobody's actually asking.

Curious if the thing that brought you back was internal or if something outside cracked it open. No pressure to answer, just wondering. The fallow years are so rarely talked about straight like this.

Camille LaurentOP·58m

The shame being worse than the not-making, yes. That's exactly it. Because the not-making is private, you can live with it, but the shame gets into everything, even the teaching. You stand there saying "push the darks back, trust the value" and a small voice says who are you to say this.

To answer your question, since it got cut off: it was internal, but not in the way people hope. No bolt of lightning, no single day I woke up changed. It was more that the quiet stopped being a punishment and became just... quiet. One afternoon I opened the studio door without deciding to. Set up a small still life, three objects, and painted it badly, on purpose, like an exercise I'd give a student. And that was the door. Not a comeback, just a room I was allowed back in.

What brought you back, in your shorter version?