Dark Night of the Painter’s Soul?
October 30, 2008
Last weekend I participated in the Art in the Park market held every Saturday in downtown St. Petersburg’s Williams Park (October - April). It is always an intriguing way to spend a day. Aside from the eclectic bunch of vendors and artisans, there is the usual steady stream of locals, European tourists and American snowbirds enjoying Florida’s best weather. You never know who might show an interest in your work. On this particular day a sixty something English gentleman and his wife were admiring the paintings I had on display. A conversation started and he began to confide in me that he is a painter, too, but that somehow he feels as though he’s lost it. Nothing he has done lately seems to work. “Ah”, I thought, “The old, I suck, nothing is working syndrome. Been there, done that.”
Truth is, all artists go through periods like that. While mired in a slumps it is easy to despair because you don’t know when it’s going to end. It’s a topic that bears discussion. I think such spells are gestation periods. They occur just before breakthroughs and are usually brought on by the nature of creative work. From a painter’s perspective; our unconscious creative mind, without notice, will subordinate the things we do well in favor of weaknesses. Without conscious awareness our focus may shift to one thing at the expense of another. Directed by our conscious desire to, be the best we can be, our unconscious mind works on our weakness without our direct consent. The secret is to keep going. Push through it. There can be no progress without struggle.
To some this sounds a little like psycho-babble. To be honest the part of me that earned a degree in structural engineering thinks it sounds a little flaky too. But the phenomenon is evident in all kinds of soulful creative endeavors. The great Saints of the Catholic Church, such as Francis of Assisi, called it the “dark night of the soul”. Francis reputedly experienced it prior to receiving the Stigmata. Psycho-babble or not I know there is truth in what I am saying because when I shared these thoughts with the English gentleman I saw the light go off in his mind. His eyes sparkled as if he had just uncovered a golden nugget. His wife responded in kind and thanked me for taking the time to share with her husband. It is one thing to despair, it is quite another to despair in one’s passion. If you’re a painter and you find yourself struggling; PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, press on!
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