Overcome Obstacles - AGE
“I’m too young.”
“I’m too old.”
These two excuses, especially the second one, are far too common in all of life. Somehow we’ve bought into the American lie that youth is to be more desired than anything and that at a certain age, we shouldn’t attempt new things. I’m certainly glad Colonel Sanders didn’t subscribe to that line of thinking, or we would have all been deprived of the pleasure of eating his famous Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was in his 60’s when he began that operation.
For some of you reading this blog, the biggest obstacle you’re going to have to overcome is your AGE. I want to especially address those of you who are past “retirement age,” whatever that is!
I’ve discovered in my years of teaching that many of my older students put their dream of oil painting on the shelf years ago. Although they became very accomplished in another line of work, they always had the nagging question of “what if?”
So here they come walking through my doors after retirement, some battling physical problems, and most battling the doubts of whether or not they’re cut out for the art world.
One such person was a gentleman by the name of Bob Gillan. Bob first started attending my classes when he was 85. He had been successful in just about everything he had ever tried. Bob was a decorated World War II veteran. Not only was he a pilot, but he also trained other pilots. This man was a war hero. A book could be written about this man’s life and all that he had accomplished. He’s one of those guys who seemed to cram at least five lives into the one he lived.
I was privileged to train Bob for 7 years, and to be quite honest, he became a very accomplished artist. In fact, he completed his 92nd oil painting when he was 92 years old.
Bob, with one of his favorite pieces.
Bob was certainly no “excuse-maker.” When he set his mind to do something, he forged ahead until he failed or he completed his task.
So let me ask you, “What are your oil-painting goals?” “Have you used your age as an excuse not to start?”
If so, PLEASE overcome that excuse. Age is not a reason to give up on your dream.
Overcome Obstacles - INEXPERIENCE
When I decided to turn professional, the first thing I did was call an artist friend of mine who had been professional for many years. I asked him what I needed in order to turn professional. Here’s the list he gave me.
1. God-given talent.
2. Desire.
3. Commitment.
God-given talent - I was sure that I had this. I had known from a very young age that God had gifted me. Check.
Desire - I was sure that I had this. I was tired of living other people’s dreams for my life. Check.
Commitment - I thought I had this. I knew there would be challenges. I didn’t realize how many there would be. Now, looking back over thirty years of art and teaching, I realize that yes, I do have that commitment. Sometimes it wavered, but I always seemed to be able to get back on track.
There were many obstacles and there will be for you too. So you must be committed to overcome those obstacles.
What are the obstacles?
1. Inexperience - You may be an absolute “newbie” to the oil painting and art world.
That’s okay. Don’t let it stop you. Some of my very best art students have been those with absolutely no oil painting experience whatsoever. Just this past year, I taught a class in northwestern Indiana where the vast majority of the students had never held a paint brush. One was even a seasoned art collector, but claimed she couldn’t even draw a stick figure. Turns out she was wrong.
This particular piece to the left is a black and white done by Angie Morris from that very class. This is her first attempt at oil painting. She came in with no experience, but only a desire to learn how to oil paint. Not bad for a first attempt.
Obstacle number one: inexperience. Do not let your fear of failure stop you from attempting something new.
Grab your brush and get going.
Learn from the Best
Who are you studying?
Everybody has heros. We all emulate other people. The up-and-coming basketball player may model his game after Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant.
When it comes to oil painting, we too need to learn from the best.
Let me ask you a few questions:
From an art standpoint, who is your hero?
Who are you studying?
Who are you reading about?
What were their successes?
What were their failures?
What can you learn from the way they lived their lives?
What do you admire about them?
What characteristics in them do you want to avoid? Nobody’s perfect.
Here’s a list of my historical art heroes:
Rembrandt, Norman Rockwell, Jan VerMeer — those are the big three
Here are some contempory artists whose work I love:
Robert Bateman, G. Harvey, Alan Maley, David Leffel
But don’t stop with just artists.
Are there people from other walks of life that you admire?
Here’s a list of a few people outside of the art world that have influenced me:
Zig Ziglar — great motivational speaker
Adrian Rogers — one of the finest preachers I’ve every heard
Dan Miller — career coach best known for his 48days website
Yaro Starak — blogging guru
Gideon Shalwick — computer and blogging guru
Dave Ramsey — financial wizard - has helped thousands of people get out of debt
And these are just a few!
Be Teachable
My main point in this section is that we’ve all got to be teachable. I thought debt and credit cards were a way of life until someone introduced me to Dave Ramsey.
But believe it or not, after 30 years of teaching, I still have students come to my classes who really don’t want to learn. Why? Because they already know it all. Or so they think.
AND I’ve had students who’ve stayed with me for years who began to stagnate. They USED TO BE teachable, but are not any longer.
Being teachable requires humility. It’s admitting you don’t know it all. It’s realizing that you don’t have all the answers, and in fact, don’t often know the questions!
Beat the Critics Part 3
The Self
It’s easy to blame our problems on other people. In fact we’re very skillfull in blaming people and circumstances.
For example:
“The judges are out to get me.” “My family doesn’t believe in me.” You can fill in the blank. There is no doubt that you will have to overcome the criticisms and concerns of others, just like I mentioned above, but the main obstacle facing us is US.
I’m going to go a little “countercultural” here and try to explode a common myth we have all heard. It’s the myth of “listening to our hearts.” You know how it goes — if you just listen to your heart, you’ll be just fine, etc.
I think our biggest problem in life is that we do just that — we listen to ourselves.
I’m going to propose just the opposite. I think we need to start talking to ourselves. Where do I get that idea
from? Actually it comes from Psalm 42:5. Don’t worry, I won’t preach to you. Read it for yourself. I want to relay to you what the great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about it.
He wrote, “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. [Now this is what the psalmist did]: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why are you cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you.’”
I know you’ve got a list of “could haves” and “should haves.” We all do. I’ve got them. I’ve got a choice to make.
Either I can live in the past and listen to my self beat me up OR I can start talking to myself and doing what I know I need to do to be successful.
My choice is to defy myself. What’s your choice?
Beat the critics.
“I Didn’t Realize I Was Laughing”
I taught a class two nights ago that was magical. Art is a lot like fishing. Most of my fishing stories have nothing to do with fish. Likewise, many of the stories from my art classes have nothing to do with oil painting.
We were all diligently working on a piece together, when one of my students laughed at something that was said. I piped right up, “I love your laugh.”
After class she told me that she hadn’t laughed in a year, which was how long her husband had been dead. He was killed last year in a horrifying traffic accident.
One of the great things about art classes is that they are tools God uses to bring people back to living again.
I experienced the same thing after my dad died. I never thought I would laugh again, but I did…right in the middle of an oil painting…right there with my friends from the class.
Beat the Critics Part 2
The Family
Your family (and also your friends) can be either the most supportive group you have, or the most discouraging. For me it was a total mixed bag.
My mother, among a few others, was by far my biggest source of encouragement. In fact, she was encouraging me when I didn’t want to be encouraged. There was a time when I was running from my art as far as I could get, but she knew I had been given a gift I should be using. When I finally did decide to pursue my art as my career, she was easily my number one cheerleader. I don’t know where I would be without her support.
Cutting Comments
But not everyone was supportive. I actually heard statements like this:
“So Bill, how’s your art going?” (spoken with a hint of sarcasm)
“When are you going to get a real job?”
“Get your head out of the clouds (or a particular body part).
“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
But by far the most cutting comment I can remember came right after the time I had been thrown out of the 8 juried shows I mentioned above:
“Have you ever considered that you’re just not good enough?”
Expectations of Others
There are also the expectations to follow in the family business. My dad wanted me to work in the factory that he spent many years in. I did work there some. I was thankful for the work, but I just did not belong there.
One friend of mine wanted his son to take over the family farm, but his son wanted to be a teacher. He was devasted that farming was not in his son’s future.
Keep in mind that these people are not your enemies. Often times they really are, in their minds, trying to help. But that’s why it’s important to make up your mind that you are going to pursue your goals in art, and not let these distractions get in the way.
Judges can be tough.
Family is a little tougher to deal with.
But the number one issue you’re going to have to deal with is in the mirror.
Beat the Critics
1. Beat the Critics
You probably already know this, but not everyone shares your dream. In fact, when you begin to think outside of the traditional boxes, you’re going to be branded as potentially weird or crazy.
I’ve found that as I have pursued my art, I’ve had to overcome three different sets of critics. I’m going to list
them in order of least importance to greatest importance. They are:
- The Judges
- The Family
- The Self
The Judges
The judges are just what you think they are. The art judges.
As you begin to get to know me, I’m going to challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and enter juried art competitions. Obviously, if you’re just starting out, this will be a ways down the road. But if you’re interested in taking your work to a whole new level, competition will certainly cause you to work a lot harder.
When I say “juried art show,” I’m talking about a show that you must pay to enter. So there is inherent risk
involved. You may not even get to show your work because it will be judged not worthy of the competition.
Back in the early 80’s, I decided to go professional. My goal was to make my living completely off my art, with no outside jobs supporting me. During one stretch, I was thrown out of 8 straight shows. “Thank you very much, Mr. Pattison, but you can hit the road.” There went my money right down the drain.
This was particularly devastating to me because I knew I had the talent to compete. I had been told all of my life that I had a special talent from God and now, finally, I had decided to “go for it.” Are these people blind?
Ultimately what you’re going to deal with is an issue of the heart, the issue of fear. Will you be willing to put
yourself out there for everyone to see and risk the humiliation of rejection? Fear of what the judges will think. Fear of what the other “better” artists will think. Fear of what your family and friends will think.
In my case, I made up my mind to keep going in spite of the constant rejection. And an amazing thing happened. I won the next three shows I entered. In one of them I was voted “best in show” and “most popular” as voted on by the public.
So get this on your list. Put it on the calendar. And prepare to overcome the judges.
go to: Beat the Critics Part 2
Highs and Lows of the Art World
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On Top of the World
Things were really beginning to go well for me now. I was publishing, painting, teaching, and travelling. It was time for me to intensify my markteting. The next step I took was to bring in a business partner, who invested money into my publishing company. In the early 90’s, we signed four other artists to publish their limited edition prints. We also continued to advertise in the major trade publications and to attend publishing conventions. Within two and a half years, we became one of the leading publishers in the limited edition print market.
Even though I was experiencing the “success” I thought I wanted in the art world, in an ironic way I was actually pushing my art to the background once again as I made sacrifices to get our other artists into the trade magazines. Anyway, things seemed to be going well for a couple of years.
That’s the end of the good news.
Back Down to Earth
In 1992, I went through a terrible partnership breakup. It was then my depressing duty to call the four artists
that we published (who were also my dear friends) to tell them about the “divorce.” Needless to say, it was
devasting to their careers. One moment they were with a leading publishing company, the next minute they were each unemployed artists.
My career spiraled downward right next to theirs. I had travelled oversees, been published in leading trade magazines, was an up-and-coming publisher myself, and had even had my work featured on the front of a magazine. Now all of that was gone. Although those were extremely challenging and tense times, I’m very grateful for my business partner, because he helped me do things in the art world I would have never been able to do alone.
With that part of my career behind me, my teaching began to take on a whole new significance, since the majority of my income was now coming through my classes. I had never wanted to be defined simply as an “art teacher,” so this was a pretty severe blow to my ego…
It was just what I needed.
Adjusting the Course
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I am now convinced that this was from God’s hand. He had a different path for me to take on my art journey, and now I was being directed in that way.
At first, I was teaching only because I had to pay the bills, not because I derived a lot of satisfaction
from it. I was fighting depression. By 1994 I couldn’t even hardly get out of bed, other than to go to art class, yet always faking it by wearing a smile. Maybe you’ve been there.
I began to force myself to study fundraising, since I had donated artwork to charities before. I didn’t realize how much of an impact that would have on where I am now. I continued to work on commission pieces and put on “one man” art shows. But to be honest, I was struggling big time.
Because of my stuggles, I lost focus on my art again and started working in many network marketing companies, trying any way I could to make a buck. But I found out quickly that the MLM’s I tried to work with made money off of people, rather than help people make money by being successful. The insights I gained from that experience actually helped me to rethink how I did my teaching and publishing.
Because I hadn’t yet embraced art teaching, you could classify the next several years of my career as “coasting.”
Success in the World of Art
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Who would have ever thought getting fired would be the best thing that ever happened to me? After solidifying the decision to turn professional in my mind, I called my two biggest supporters, my mom and my sister. They had always been a great encouragement to me, and I wanted them to be among the first to know.
After that I joined a local art guild. The president of the guild said I should join the board, but I said there was no way I would do that. That was a Friday night and the next Tuesday they held nominations for the next year. Wednesday morning they called me and told me that I had been elected president. Whoa! Here we go again.
At my first board meeting, I met a lady there named Judy. She looked at my art work and asked me to start teaching her. Can you believe that? Why was all this happening to me? That was in September and I taught my first class in January.
I began to read anything I could get my hands on about marketing, not just art, but all marketing. I was a sponge.
I entered as many art exhibits as I could. I remember one time I drove to an art show and I didn’t even have one dime in my pocket for the drive home. I knew if I wasn’t committed to it, it was never going to happen.
I was blessed to start out well, winning a lot of awards, but also brought back to earth through a lot of rejection. I did outside shows, inside shows, and in-between shows. Throughout it all, I had a lot of support from my family, which kept me going through the hard times, and also through the self-doubting times.
That’s when I REALLY got into teaching, realizing that travelling every weekend to shows was not the way I wanted to go. I started to book more and more classes around the state. During that time, I also investigated getting into the limited edition print market and began to read about publishing, and what it meant. I didn’t have a clue. I found that information about publishing art was fairly scarce. Finally, little by little, I started to gain some understanding about what it was like to be a publisher.
I released my first print in the early 1980’s and continued trying to find leading printers of fine art work, all the while continuing my study of fine art publishing. In 1987 we relocated to Indianapolis, IN, and I formed my own publishing company called Artistic Expressions. I started to run small ads in trade magazines, newspapers, and radio spots. At this time, I was also entering national and international art exhibits.
It was then, in 1990, that I was accepted to exhibit with the Phoebus Touring Artists at Hellenic Art Institute in Athens, Greece. I was selected as the most popular artist of the 14 artists by the public. That year I was also accepted into the prestigious “Who’s Who in American Art,” after being turned down the previous three years.
I was beginning to experience success in the world of art, or more precisely, the fruit of success. I think I became successful when I began to do what I knew all along I should be doing. Not only “should” I have been doing it, now I wanted to do it. I thought I was on top of the world.
Lousy Salesmen Make Great Artists
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Life Changing Moment # 6 - You’re Fired!
Go Professional, Young man
I couldn’t believe that my boss had urged me to quit. He didn’t offer to help me. He didn’t offer training. He didn’t offer encouragement. Instead, he offered me asphalt. Hit the road, Jack.
This was another low moment in my life. I disagreed with him and told him so. His reply was pretty clear. He said, “Not only are you not a good car saleman, you are not a salesman AT ALL.”
Not too long after that I was called into the office on a Friday night and was fired. They told me to clear out my desk and head straight for the door. I wasn’t even able to say goodbye to the co-workers that I had worked with for the past two years.
Needless to say I was devasted. I felt like a complete failure. I went home, closed the curtains, and sat in the house for 3 straight days without going outside one time. On the bright side, my wife and children were happy to have me back in the real world. They would actually be able to see me a few hours a week.
Shortly after all the turmoil, my wife checked into unemployment for me and said I could get it for 18 months because the economy was so bad. Perhaps that was God’s way to say “go for it, this is what I ‘ve got for you.”
I then called my friend who was already a professional artist and asked him what he did to turn professional. I just figured I would have to join some association or sign papers at the courthouse or something.
He told me that he would never forget the three things someone once told him about becoming a professional artist. You have to have:
1. God given talent
2. Desire
3. Commitment
I wrote those three things on a piece of paper and put it in my studio…I still have that paper.