This week I organized my paintings and came across a small, special painting that means a lot to me. I wanted to share the story behind this painting with you. It's a story about the boundaries we set for ourselves and how liberating ourselves from these boundaries can be wonderful.
As you may know, my paintings today can look quite different from one another. Some of them feature very clear figures and objects (what's known as "figurative paintings"), while others are paintings without a defined subject, where you can't necessarily identify specific figures and objects (these are called "abstract paintings").
But it wasn't always like this. I used to think that the "best" and "right" way to paint was only in a figurative manner, and as accurately as possible. When I found this painting among the many paintings standing next to my bed in the room, I held it in my hands and remembered how important it was for me to paint it, specifically to break free from the perception I had about painting, a perception I didn't even realize was limiting me at the time.
As I held this painting in my hands, I recalled the sense of liberation I felt when I painted this small and perhaps not so aesthetically pleasing painting. And I thought to myself how important it was for me to paint it.
The Goal: To Paint as Accurately as Possible!
When I, like other artists, paint faces, I sometimes have a tendency to be as precise as possible, aiming for something "beautiful" and anatomically accurate. Sometimes I do this because I receive commissions for portrait paintings or desire to paint very precise portraits.
Over time and through my development as an artist, I realized that the tendency for precision and the pursuit of perfection, not only in portraits but in my paintings in general, began to hinder me much more than it helped me, in the quality of my paintings in my personal development. So, I decided to enter uncharted territory and explore what happens when we free ourselves from perceptions of beauty and precision.
Rules and limitations begin to appear
Most of my childhood and adolescent years, I learned to draw on my own. I remember sitting with magazines I found at my grandmother's house, or at a friend’s house, surrounded by piles of printer paper, pencil, and and an eraser, and my favorite exercise was to copy faces.
Faces of famous and less famous people, faces from giant photos and faces from tiny photos, faces from fashion shoots or advertisements, as long as they were faces. My goal was to learn the rules of anatomy "by hand," to understand exactly where to draw what, to understand the rules of proportions and placement. To be as precise as possible and practice the anatomy of faces as many times as possible.
Rules and limitations start to hinder the creator
Over time and with practice, I managed to achieve a high level of accuracy. I painted precise portraits of famous people, family members, and people around me accurately, garnering praise from those around me.
Since then, years have passed, and I began to feel that I was reaching the pinnacle of my portraiture. Indeed, everyone has a different and unique face, and each time painting faces is slightly different from the previous time, but I didn't know where else I could develop beyond painting more and more faces and people. I felt that after I finished exploring and practicing the rules of portrait painting, the rules began to confine me within strict boundaries of what is allowed and what is not.
The Liberation Arrives
In recent years, I decided to re-explore the subject of "faces," the same subject I began exploring as a child. The decision came after I participated in a painting workshop that helped me release the limitations of accuracy and definitions of aesthetics and beauty in a very broad sense, as I set for myself as a child when I learned to draw. In order to re-explore the subject of faces, I decided to paint the least accurate and least "beautiful" face in the classical sense that I could.
The Ugliest Face I've ever Painted
One day, when I had enough time and inspiration, I grabbed a square wooden board, drew a circle on it, and poured into it one after the other components of a human face in positions, angles, and colors different from the norm. Some parts of the painting were more anatomically accurate, and some less so, but my goal in this painting was to completely release myself from painting precise portraits. It was the least precise face I had painted up to that point, but I enjoyed every moment of it.
Learning the Rules to Break Them
I thought to myself while working on this painting, that undoubtedly respecting the rules of painting and anatomy is important, as without these rules, I wouldn't have developed and learned. However, I thought to myself that I already knew how to paint very accurate portraits, meaning that learning to paint in a liberated manner wouldn't nullify everything I knew. So why not rebel and do something new and special that I had never done before?
The most surprising thing to me in the painting process of breaking limiting perceptions, was how much breaking the "dos" and "don’t" that I had set for myself was one of the most enjoyable things I've done in my life.
The True Liberation in Art
In the end, I realized that the only boundaries in painting are the boundaries I set for myself, and after I learned and practiced again and again the "dry" rules of portrait painting, I broke the framework and found new rules of my own.
What I learned from this experience is that when I am the one inventing the rules, I cannot go wrong at all. When I establish the rules, suddenly there isn't an external, made-up standard of what is accurate, what is right, and what needs to be done, but the only standard guiding my painting is what I truly want.
Think about how amazing this is; how many opportunities in our lives allow us to do exactly what we want?
In conclusion, this is one of the most important and dear paintings to me. For me, learning was through painting, but for others, creativity can be expressed in various ways, in hobbies, in creative thinking at work, in action.
In any case, creativity is our own small and special world, where we can do whatever we want, whether it's painting the way we want, letting our imagination soar in creative thinking, or doing things differently from how everyone else does them. What's most important is to pay attention and rid ourselves of limiting thoughts that we've adopted in our own ways in all areas of life.
I invite you to think about your personal journey, where do you feel stuck? In which area would you like to break the frame?
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