Crown Shyness: reflections on F*ck Perfect from Aubrey Szabo
When I was first approached by Art Not Shame for the position of Artist Witness, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was about as excited as I was anxious; could I really make a piece that would be worthy of the position? Having never done contract artwork on this scale, I felt kind of undeserving. But after sitting down with and meeting the facilitators for the iteration of Fuck Perfect I was Witnessing, I very quickly realized I was in the right place, not just as an artist, but as a person. As a member of a community of people unlearning the various ways society had taught them to be ashamed, unsure, to stifle their creativity, that art was “meant for someone else, someone better than I am”, and in doing so learn new ways to allow ourselves the freedom to just... be. No pretext, no constraints. I’m sure we all still have more work in that department to do (I know I definitely do), but to say the least, this experience was a very good start.
I didn’t fully know what I wanted to do at the outset of the workshop. I had a few loose ideas that I thought would be fun and fitting to the theme of challenging perfectionism, and in hindsight wanting to “just do all of them” definitely would’ve been too much for me to handle. Even still, I find myself wishing I’d had more time, more energy, more ability to just Do Everything™. This was definitely an act in learning to set reasonable limits and expectations of myself. I settled on “just a watercolour painting” for a few reasons: one, it’s harder to “hide” mistakes and so you have to work fairly transparently and honestly, and any mistakes or unintentional bleeds or brushstrokes you made you’d just kind of have to live with. Having moved primarily to digital illustration and painting as a freelance artist, not being able to just CTRL+Z every line I wasn’t happy with away in to the digital æther was a challenge, especially considering this was something I was being PAID to do. I never really liked having to live with mistakes, but this process definitely taught me to love and appreciate (and sometimes, just live with) the ones I’ve made.
The other primary reason I chose watercolour as the medium for the piece was because they have a very unique way of bleeding in to and affecting each other. Maybe it’s a bit cheesy, but I really liked that as a metaphor for the ways we were all going to teach and grow with each other as a group, as artists. Aside from that? It had been a long time since I’d used watercolours, and getting back in touch with the part of myself I’d kind of forgotten about was cathartic in a sense.
Initially, I had thought I’d just be watching each workshop session unfold as The Witness; not really speaking or interacting much, and just kind of Making Art while being inspired by what was going on in the group. It’s what I’d envisioned, anyway. But really quickly it became kind of evident how awkward it would be in a digital setting. Maybe that would be an extremely fun and rewarding process to undergo with a group in a Real, Physical Space, but over Zoom calls where no one can really see what’s unfolding? Not so much.
That’s not to say I didn’t spend a good chunk of time taking note of key themes and phrases and making sketches in a sketchbook in my lap, but it was definitely a very different kind of involvement than what I’d had in my head. Nonetheless, it felt incredibly necessary to be more engaged, and I’m incredibly grateful that I was. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had to challenge my expectations and personal comforts in the ways I did, and I wouldn’t have gotten to experience the overall growth of the group in the same way.
I didn’t actually start the painting itself until the last two weeks of the program. Life rarely goes perfectly as planned, and this was definitely testament to that fact. I ended up in the hospital after the long-term deterioration of my mental health led to a severe breakdown, and subsequently lost a six-year-long relationship to the hurt caused over the course of that breakdown. I’m still healing from it all months later, and I channelled a lot of the experience of having to cope with mistakes made in ways I had never had to do before in to the painting. It probably shows.
We’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all made mistakes, but part of being alive is learning to live with that weight, turning it in to positive growth and change in our lives. But hurt, mistakes, frustrations, sadness... all these things can be difficult to deal with, can lead us to suppress ourselves and isolate from others, especially when those hurts involve those closest to us. Challenging as it may be to open up and fight those urges to stagnate, being willing to do so, to try something new, that’s the biggest and hardest first step we can take. Through a community of brave and honest people, we allow ourselves to affect and be affected by the growth and change of others. And that is always so much more than we can do on our own.
I tried to illustrate all of these themes in each element of the painting: community and isolation, hurt and healing, love and loss, stagnation and change, unified under the umbrella of a personal re-connection with nature and art. Early on over the course of the workshop, I asked each of the facilitators to name any colour. I didn’t fully know what I was going to do with this information; I had thought that maybe I’d construct a watercolour palette using only the colours mentioned. I thought that it would be an interesting way to put the way the facilitators guided and affected the growth and trajectory of the workshop. That seemed cool! But when the general idea for the painting formed itself in my mind and I sketched it out, I realized exactly how hard that would be to really get across. So I made a little moth for each of the facilitators using each colour they respectively chose, flying free from a chrysalis. Maybe it doesn’t have the same impact as the initial idea, but I liked the idea nonetheless.
The watercolours used for the painting were paintstones ordered from an Indigenous-owned business called “Beam Paints”, situated in M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. The paintstones all use sustainably and ethically sourced pigments, and are shaped with tree sap, gum arabic, and Manitoulin honey, and are packaged plastic-free in canvas. They were an absolute joy to paint with, and were naturally the best choice for this project for multiple reasons. To Anong Migwans Beam; thank you for your excellent-quality watercolours! If you’re considering trying or getting in to watercolour painting, or you’re just looking for colours for your next project, I would highly encourage you to check her shop out!
Looking back on the painting now months after its completion, and weeks after it left my hands to live with Art Not Shame, I feel a mix of emotions, both positive and negative. On the one hand, the painting came out the way it was meant to and was exactly what I needed to make at the time. I spent hours huddled over it some days, sketching and painting without any concept of the passage of time. The process was both fun and healing. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, there are so many things I would’ve done differently now, changed or fleshed out more, added, left out. It feels imperfect to me now; less than it could have been. But, like I mentioned earlier, unlearning perfectionism and learning to let my art exist untethered from the weight of expectation is a process, and I still have work to do.
Diverging from the painting to talk for a moment about the combination poem-musical piece I created in conjunction; I’ll mostly let it speak for itself. It shares a title with the painting: Crown Shyness. The entirety of the poem came to me at once during the second-last Fuck Perfect session, and in presenting it, I felt a unique opportunity to tie in my love of music, which had otherwise been absent in the overall project, by improvising a piano accompaniment. I think this was the first poem and first musical piece that I’d actually seen to completion in a few years, so it was nice actually getting in touch with my roots again.
Overall, I had a lot of fun creating these conjunct pieces, for all the hurt and challenge the process may have provided at times. They were exactly what I needed, and I hope my amalgam of feelings speaks to you in some way. To the team at Art Not Shame, my Fuck Perfect co-facilitators, and every one of the group participants who joined us that Autumn: thank you. I sincerely appreciate everything you shared with me and each other, the ways we all affected one another, and for the opportunity you provided me to create something of the experience. I hope we can all do this again soon sometime, maybe without the barriers of screens and webcams.
Until then;
~Aubrey