Why bother hanging on to your truly ugly works? They might have something to teach you.

I have an ugly painting I keep.

I was raised around fine artists and craftsmen, one of them was a black powder gun smith.  He would go to black powder or modern gun shows and find a flint lock action or a percussion cap, both without stock or barrel and cart them home to make a new pistol or rifle.  Dave would hand carve the stock, carefully inlay the fittings and put other artistic details into each weapon he created. He had this one flint lock pistol that he called his ugly stick that he would never sell.  It out shot most everything on the gun range (black powder) and was the most ornate pistol he had ever made.  He kept working on it; every time he learned something new, he would find a way to put it into his ugly stick.

I knew a wood craftsman who had a box like that too.  Every mistake he solved, new technique he learned; he put it into that box.  Jon told me all about the purpose of that particular box.  It was a note book, a place where he put all of his lessons that he learned.  Every solution he found for mistakes or problems went into that so he would never forget what he had discovered.

A few years ago, I met a pastelist who did something I have never heard of.  She sealed her pastels with cold wax.  I asked her if she would tell me how she accomplished it an she considered it and declined to do so.  I was disappointed but I could respect her choice, she went to the work to figure it all out.  So here I am with 3 ugly paintings that I am using to try to understand what she did. 

I’m going to keep them, no matter how they come out because; I can continue to learn from them.  So far I have left one on the dash of my car for weeks in the sun, baked it, put more pastel on it and layered more cold wax on it, and run my hands over the surface..  I want to see if the pigments fade, if the wax melts and moves, if the pastel comes off and check the durability of this idea.  One of these paintings may always be ugly, but it will always teach me something and that is what gives it value.  It makes is valuable to me.

I don’t advise clinging to everything you have ever done and sometimes, you just need the catharsis of a bonfire. But for those things that can still teach you something, hang on to them.  The represent courage to try something new and perseverance on the journey of discovery.