Some Art About Other Art by Shorna A. '25

There is currently a painting staring at me. 

It’s perched on top of my bookshelf, at the perfect vantage point to scornfully watch me. It’s a green house, inspired by the one across the street from my parent’s house. I underpainted it pink. It looks bad, and I don’t have the time to fix it. Its color palette is incohesive, the perspective is off, the value contrast is nonexistent. A couple more layers of paint could make it beautiful, but I know I probably won’t be finishing it anytime soon. As much as leaving a painting like that is physically painful, there’s a knot of guilt, pushing down the desire to grab my paint brushes, because I know I probably ought to spend the time doing the supplemental reading for 6.046. I put it on the top shelf to avoid the oil paint rubbing off everywhere; I wonder if, on some level, I also wanted to shame myself for producing ‘bad’ work, and leaving it as such.

As you might’ve assumed, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about making art. 

Painting used to be an integral part of my life. I didn’t own many pairs of jeans that weren’t splattered with color. My mom would to unfailingly chide me when I’d graffiti my own arms on the daily. My first kindergarten show-and-tell was a painting of a sunset, which I recall blending and re-blending until I fell asleep at my desk. 

I still love painting, but my relationship with art is changing. I’m a messy painter, or at least… I used to be. The last time I painted I walked away spotless. A bittersweet feeling settled on my tongue yesterday afternoon, as I thumbed a hole in the last of my familiar, paint-stained pants and finally accepted that I needed to let them go. 

The time to make art is now a luxury. I recently told someone that I ‘paint a lot’, and realized with a start that this simply isn’t true – not anymore. I made 5 large oil paintings over the summer, and have finished almost nothing during my sophomore year. The bottom drawer of my desk is filled with paint. Quinacridone Magenta, Viridian Green, Cerulean. I see the tubes and I want to do something with them, but I can’t. It now feels less like art (of any kind) is omnipresent and more as if it’s a side-job, momentary dawdling as I get sidetracked from my larger (academic) goals.

Somewhat unfortunately, making art requires lengthy, contiguous blocks of time. Almost all of my blog posts are written in one sitting, often 4-5 consecutive hours of thinking, writing, typing, and editing. There’s some sensation akin to anxiety there, as well. I keep painting not really because I have an explicit desire to spend 8 hours staring at a photo of plums, but because it feels natural. It is an activity you start and continue until you’re done. There’s inertia. Somehow, if I go too long without painting, or writing, or anything else, I start feeling antsy, as if the walls are closing in on me. Internally, my creation is often propelled by a feeling of claustrophobia, a sense that if I don’t make something I can’t go on.

Art is a treasure I keep in my back pocket, something fun to think about, even if I don’t always have the time to invest in it. I like teaching people about color theory, about the internal rhythm to paint. There are warm and cool blues, reds, and yellows, and one can use this fact to mix any color they want to. I have nuggets of wisdom, lore about painting. Coffee makes good calligraphy ink, and dries shiny. You’re supposed to wait a few weeks before varnishing an oil painting. One of my favorite thought experiments is to mentally envision how I would paint everything currently in my line of sight.

Art has brought me joy in unexpected and serendipitous ways. Even its frustrations are so satisfying. Painting is an exercise in self-discipline. Your sketch is always attractive; you mentally fill in all the unfinished parts with their ideal realization, which you quickly discover is entirely beyond your skill set. It looks horrible for a couple of hours. More than a couple, actually. It generally looks atrocious until you’re almost done, at which point you’re so feverishly chasing the painting’s completion that it’s hard to appreciate any progress. You feel the entire time as if you’ve become sick of the painting, and are simply waiting to finally throw it across the room, and potentially into the trash can. But there’s a moment, after you’ve paid sufficient penance (in time and tears), that you understand. You see the fruition of your efforts and achieve the sweetness of completion.

Incredibly, despite all of this – my internal reliance on making art, my delight at its existence, my enjoyment of the artistic process – too long without a brush in my hand had made me forget how to be feel happy with my work. Too much thought had gone into it; how long would I need? Was I good enough to pull off the effect I wanted? Would I actually want the piece when it was finished? I created a ball of frustration, culminating in a very sad, slightly pink (but mostly green) house.

I needed to stop intellectualizing. So, to force myself out of it, I did a simple exercise; I sat down with a piece of paper and a pencil, pulled up a few reference images, and started. 5 minutes per face, 5 faces. At the end of half an hour, I was happy. For the first time in months, I had finally achieved the soft internal glow of a ‘successful’ drawing. 

the heads I drew!

They’re not perfect, but the wonderful part was that they didn’t have to be. They look like people, and they’re all charming, in their own ways. The likeness is dubious on a few, but it doesn’t matter. I set my pencil down and I was happy with my work. Imperfect, but still worthwhile. I felt like an artist.