This artist struggles with Imposter Syndrome

Trying once again to blog more often, here I am, on Birthday Month Eve. With two new nagging spirits, or maybe, just TheBrains in Horse Costume. That's right! New spirits! New things! Look a bird. No. A horse. No. Two horses! Because Hey! It's me, the ENFP queen always looking for the Next Thing. And no. I did NOT fill up my sketchbook this summer. But then, I bet you never thought I would, did you? 

Here they are, those horsey spirits, before they started whining. Or whinneying. Or whinny-whining.

 One thing I always have trouble with is believing in myself as a Real Artist. Or a real anything for that matter. 90% of my education came from books, libraries, experience – not from the university or the art school or the atelier. Even when I did study my first art, music, in the academic prison, I didn’t feel real. Too dyslexic to learn to read music I faked my way into an orchestra. Later on I dug myself into garden expert then slid myself into the job of library director (talk about a profession enslaved by Academia!).  So, as a chronic sufferer of Imposter Syndrome, I wonder if my art doubts are just what feels normal.  When my friends compliment my work – well. Over the years I’ve learned how to accept a compliment gracefully, but - you know. They’re my friends. The only compliment that ever thrilled me was from another, and truly fine, artist I know well enough to show my work to and it wasn’t so much what he said as the look on his face.  I am always happy when a client likes one of my portraits – because if I please  her, I feel “real”. It’s why I started with portraits first. Validation I could count on.
 

But I’m feeling hungry to try New Things. And I’m riddled with self-doubt. Nearly every time I leave the studio I hate what’s on the easel, the drawing board, the art table. Nine times out of ten I am pleasantly surprised when I come back the next day, but, hoo boy, those nighttime conversations are rough. 

The last time I blogged here I was still flush with the excitement of filling up my handmade sketchbook but I was getting stumped for ideas to put inside. I'm still, alas, a prisoner of the  Precious Notebook Syndrome.

 I am trying hard to just put marks in the durn thing, but there are still 4 pages left. While hunting for inspiration I stumbled upon a YouTube video by Ida Andersen Lang, one of the teachers in Sketchbook Revival 22. It was a short hop from YouTube to her website where she offers practical lessons, some free, some for pay.  I was very drawn to her artistic style but I was even more interested in what she has to say about some of the issues we late-comers to art face: How to have fun with your art. How to develop your own style. How to deal with perfectionism. Plus some cornerstone lessons in basic technique. - always a good thing to have under your belt. 

I have had fun with her lessons and already embraced some of her techniques and truly appreciate her sensitivity to those voices – the muse? TheBrains? Those horses? Those outside spirits that prod us and push us and ask us to be more than we thought we were – more, even than we thought we could be. That say “Just TRY” 

And when I tried to paint those horses, from one of her lessons, they had a lot to say.