bad art therapy

written by sophie klemond

the value of creating things with no value.

when i feel anxious, overwhelmed, and tired of the seemingly endless tasks of daily living, one of my favorite quick resets is driving to the beach, mini watercolor palette in hand, to paint. i am not a good painter. the art i create in these moments is not what most art critics, or anyone other than my mom, would consider high quality art. it lacks photorealism, i have no idea how to properly mix my watercolors, and i don’t intend to learn any time soon. when i tell people i like to paint, the responses typically range from “are you good at it?” to “i wish i could paint, i’m a terrible artist”. a lot of people don’t find art to be an enjoyable pastime because they don’t like how their initial attempts turn out. I understand this feeling on a deep level; i cycled through at least four different sports in high school because I wasn’t instantly a varsity-calibre athlete at them. being bad at things just isn’t that fun. that being said, i’d like to make a case for the indispensable beauty that lies in creating ugly things.

the things we create in our daily lives tend to be deeply focused on the end result. projects for work or school must be meticulously crafted into a nice, shiny, finished product. academic and professional writing must be up to a certain external standard to earn a passing grade or a promotion or a good review. with the increasingly pervasive presence of social media and image curation, there’s a subtle pressure for almost everything we create to be aesthetically presentable, whether it’s our outfit, our bedroom, our breakfast, or our drawings. the resounding takeaway is that if you’re going to put it out there for people to see, it had better be good. this mindset infiltrates our thoughts to the point where we have a tendency to hyper-analyze even the things that we aren’t sharing with the world. when you look in the mirror first thing in the morning, if you’re anything like me you might be comparing yourself to the half-dozen models that you saw on your explore page while you were scrolling last night. it doesn’t matter that nobody but you is bearing witness to your bare face – you’re still comparing what’s in front you to an external judging committee, even if they’ll never see it. each one of us is operating as part of a society that is, more than ever, obsessed with image and finished results.

so why does this mean you should paint ugly paintings?

i recently came across a term that i jotted down because it struck a nerve with me immediately: outcome neutrality. a complete detachment from the finished product of whatever it is you’re pouring your time and energy and creativity into. it sounds pretty counterintuitive, it goes against my deeply ingrained perfectionist tendencies, and i love it. prioritizing the process over the result certainly isn’t a new concept; after all “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey”. but to truly embrace this principle we must actively engage in the action of creating something solely for the experience of making it, without even a shadow of expectation for the reward of finishing it. this is something we’re often very afraid to do, but it’s freeing, therapeutic, and can help us be kinder to ourselves when we do inevitably mess up in other areas of our lives. when we build ourselves up solely on the foundation of how good we can be, and how valuable the things we can make are, we fall apart when we don’t meet standards – whether our own or someone else’s. but when we’ve practiced the art of doing things we’re not good at just to do them, we actually become more confident in ourselves as well as more accepting of our own inherent, inescapable imperfection.

this is not to say we shouldn’t challenge ourselves and be motivated to improve at certain skills. i recently finished an introductory art course at my university where, after hours of focus, i created a few drawings that made me proud with their realism. the common factor throughout my best pieces? i was relaxed and not emotionally invested in the outcome of the drawings while i was creating them. this allowed me to tackle objects and textures that initially seemed much too daunting for my beginner skillset, and to then be happily surprised at the results just because i let myself create freely without pressure.

outcome neutrality doesn’t mean you can’t love what you end up with; it’s just not the focus of your practice. when i paint the sunset over ocean beach, i’m not doing a great job and frankly i’m not really trying to. i am spreading water and pigments around on paper and making marks where there was empty white space an instant ago, and that’s enough for me.

sincerely, sophie estelle

p.s. go paint something today. i hope it turns out terrible <3.