Less Thinking More Doing

I overthink.

If I were to diagnose myself with some type of defect that would be it. Overthinking 100% of the time. I never had a problem with it until recently. I always felt that I was being thorough by evaluating my decisions. Thinking about what I want and calculating how I wanted to approach it. 

I’ve been getting hung up on these “calculations” my whole career as an artist. Overthinking the things that I’m creating, overthinking what I want my brand to be/do, and overthinking what move I should make next. Being a self taught painter and entrepreneur I’ve felt like an amateur the majority of the time. So, I made it a priority to constantly learn new things, try new techniques and test the market. I spent a lot of time focusing on testing my artwork in front of different audiences. Really trying to figure out what works. The strain and pressure of it all taught me that there's no value in anyone else's opinion of my work. I came to realize that it’s all about what I feel and my opinion of my work. To tell the truth I knew that going into this. For me it just happened to be one of those things where I didn’t believe it and I needed to see for myself. 

I am cerebral. I like to take in all the information that I possibly can and then turn that information into something. I have to be productive with it. I got all of this insight from this weird Enneagram personality test. By the way, it took me forever to even take the Enneagram because I was overthinking.

I was like “OK well why would I want to do this?” 

“What’s the purpose of this?”

It’s incredible how I can not do things because I want answers, but I will get the answers if I just do it. So, I finally take it and I get my Enneagram number (5) and it tells me I am the type of person that wants all of the information. I believe that a person is never done learning. I am aware that I don’t know everything and I feel like I don’t have enough information ever. I thought

“wow this is this is really true”.

I’ve slowed myself down so much because I’m constantly reminding myself there’s more to know about all subjects. So that results in me seeking & gathering more information and just piling it on. Not putting the information into action it’s become the action of gathering information. Now, once I've learned this I immediately started to reject this behavior. I didn’t like it. I wanted to be more productive. I didn’t want to be this person that just gathers and doesn’t produce. So I started to make a change. It was kind of easy because I knew how. I’d gathered that much info that I could pivot and pick a direction that would help me break out of this behavior. 

Over the years I’ve studied the art game and it’s players. I was led to abstract expressionism by one of my favorite artist from Brooklyn, New York. His name is Christopher Florentino. He goes by the artist name “Florie” and practices Abstract Expressionism. This is an art form where the art is created subconsciously. In my case it’s subconscious painting. It’s so fascinating to me and I’m sure it can be approached in many different ways. The goal is to paint without thinking. It’s a freestyle and whatever you’re feeling at that time is what will come out. In a way it’s similar to meditation. I fell in love with it because it scraps the plan. It forces me to be present and to connect with myself in the moment rather than thinking about how others people may judge the work. Whatever happens, happens. Once I grasped this concept I decided to do 30 paintings in 30 days to really solidify this practice. Now, when I did this amazing things started to happen. First, I developed a style and a signature that I felt was most natural to me and my voice. Next, I began to think about each painting differently and detach from the artwork. I started to look at each art piece as it’s own unique thing.

The work no longer needed to be perfect products that needed to appeal to the masses. 

This exercise forced me to make art regardless of how I felt. It force me to take control of the commitment then I had within that commitment and make art when I didn’t have the energy, when I was feeling uninspired and when I felt I didn’t have enough time to make something “good”. That really tested me as an artist. It made me reevaluate how seriously I took myself and how seriously I took my work. Now, this is still an interesting concept to me because I want to take my work serious but I don’t want it to be a burden or hinder my performance. I recognize that there has to be a balance with it. I learned to except myself where I was. Some days I would make a painting that I thought could’ve been better. Sometimes I made paintings where the colors just like they didn’t work together at all, but I learned to approach it with the mindset of

“that’s what I picked at the time and that’s ok".

It doesn’t matter if it matches or looks aesthetically pleasing, that’s not what it’s about. I become more comfortable with that feeling and that philosophy began to move throughout my life into other areas outside of art. I shifted my focus to being present and being me. 

Ultimately I had to come to terms with the reality that I cannot effectively make art that is aimed at trying to connect with other people. I need to just make the art that I connect with and in turn that work will automatically connect with other people. So, this is where I am now on my journey. I’m in a place where I understand the art that I’m creating. Although I’ve learned to create better art on the fly by flushing out what I’m feeling in the moment, I still have artwork that is very much planned and calculated. I think It’s important to be able to do both.

 -Von