Quote Of The Week

"Perfection is the best you can do on the day". 

                                                           Anon

This was quoted to me once by a yoga  teacher, and I've been fond of it ever since.  People seem to split into two camps; they either embrace it wholeheartedly, or reject it completely.  There doesn't seem to be any middle ground with this one!

The logic is simple.  If you are doing your absolute best, then perfection is, indeed, the best you can do on the day.  You can't make it any better.  If you really must aim for perfection, then perhaps this quote will help you to be a little kinder to yourself, to relax the rules you are living by;  I suspect that they hurt you, on a regular basis. 

Nothing Succeeds As Planned

It's true.  Or, as John Lennon put it, 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'.  And if it's true of life, how much more true must it be for making art?  We get an idea into our heads, for a piece of work... and we make it... and it doesn't match the picture in our head.  So, we jump on our creative selves.  You failed, we tell her.  It's Not Right.  It's Not Perfect.  It's Not What I Wanted. 

Funny how we rarely, if ever, contemplate the idea that it might be better than the original idea...  Perfectionism is not a virtue; it's a vice.  It squeezes the life out of creativity, and blinds us to the good points of what we actually make...if it allows us to make anything at all. 

I knew what I wanted to achieve when I took this image...but it didn't actually work out that way.  What do you think...is it a successful image?  Does it have balance, visual interest, good colour?  What do you think is wrong with it?  I was disappointed with it...should I have been, do you think? 

Now, fish out something that you have judged in your head as 'not good enough'; look at it again.  Ask yourself the questions I ask above... how does it rate?  If we can get past the subjective nature of perfectionism, we can see our work more clearly, and understand it better.  Try it out.