Monday Motivator: Try Things Against Your Grain

Monday Motivator Motivation Quote

“Try things against your grain to find out just what your grain really is.”

“You are always the student in a one-person art school. You are also the teacher of that class.”

“Vermeer found a life’s work in the corner of a room.”

Irwin Greenberg, The Painter’s Primer

There are 97 other tips in the primer linked above, a list that was apparently distributed to students of the Art Students League of New York. These three resonated with me in particular.

Another sounded very familiar:
“Never say I can’t. It closes the door to potential development.”.

I generally say: “Add the word ‘yet’. Say ‘I can’t, yet’.”

May 2019 be a year filled with creative joy for you, with moments where ‘I can’t, yet’ becomes ‘I can, now’.

Inspirational quotes for artists

Inspirational quotes for artists

Inspirational quotes for artists

2 Replies to “Monday Motivator: Try Things Against Your Grain”

  1. When a student would say, “I can’t do this,” I would tell her or him that word wasn’t allowed in my classroom. Worked every time. Make yourself a little sign to keep in front of you when you are painting that says, “I THINK I CAN, I KNOW I CAN, I DID IT.” Two of my favorite quotes by Edgar Degas: ” Painting is easy for those that do not know how, but very difficult for those that do, ” and “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things”.

    1. I do like those quotes Jim! Together they really do sum it up — it’s hard because you know what it entails, but the best things come when we are able to forget what we know we can do.

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