Unhappy with Your Art? Perfect!

Chad Little is an amazingly skilled painter, who creates beautiful and unique figurative artworks (all with great titles that only add to the impact). He and I belong to an online group filled with talented artists and a good percentage of them envy his talent and wish they could paint the way he does. So I was fascinated to see his thoughts about his latest painting (above) which is called "Ruthie Relished A Spirited Game of Chicken"When Chad posted it on our Facebook group, he got 55 likes and tons of positive comments. We all admired the combination of realism and abstraction as well as his masterly painting skills.A few days later, he posted again to announce he was going to rework the painting (I am reproducing this with his permission):This is what I love about artists. We never settle. We never rest on our laurels. If we achieve something, we immediately look to the next thing. We dig deeper, offer more of ourselves, push our abilities, stretch our knowledge, and even after we finally get to our destination – when we can now definitively create powerful landscapes/portraits/abstracts - we quickly set our sights on a new one.Some might say it’s an affliction rather than a gift, and maybe it is. But there’s an important lesson in this for all of us, no matter how far along we are on this art journey. If we are unsatisfied with our work, we mustn’t wish our lives away, waiting for some future time when we have more skills, imagining that we will then be satisfied. Judging by Chad's reaction to that stunning painting, we won’t!So we need to enjoy wherever we are now. We need to relish every discovery; appreciate every moment that we get to spend creating; savour every compliment, and learn from every critique. If we accept that we will never be completely satisfied with our work, we can let that pressure fall from our shoulders. We can stop focusing on the destination and simply take pleasure in the journey.Please visit Chad's website. Not only are his paintings amazing, but he donates all his proceeds to support charitable causes and he has a studio that's to die for!