Do you ever feel paralyzed by the need to make your art look perfect?
In Season 3, Episode 22 of Art Crush, Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn tackle one of the biggest roadblocks for creatives: perfectionism.
We discuss how the obsession with photorealism and perfect technique is actually costing us culturally, stifling human expression, and keeping brilliant ideas trapped inside the minds of artists who are too afraid to share them.
From unlearning the rigid rules of childhood art classes to building antifragility against armchair critics, Fi and Paula explore why learning to be at peace with your imperfect product is the ultimate key to authentic creativity.
- Why the education system’s focus on drawing things exactly as they appear ruins our understanding of what art actually is.
- What we can learn from how children approach learning new skills.
- How perfectionism is often just a mask for trying to control how other people perceive us.
- How to let unhelpful critiques roll off your back, especially when they come from well-meaning family members.
- Why lumpy paint, visible brushstrokes, and so-called mistakes are what will keep human art relevant in the age of AI.
Are you struggling with perfectionism, imposter syndrome, or an unhelpful mindset? We want to hear from you! Leave a comment letting us know what is holding you back, and we may tackle your creative block (anonymously!) in a future episode.
Listen & Subscribe:New episodes of Art Crush drop every Saturday! Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Audible, iHeartRadio, or wherever you stream your favorite shows.
00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Art crush with artist Fi Marks and Paula Telizyn, where we talk about running an art business, being an artist, being a woman who’s an artist, and more.
00:00:22 Speaker 1: Hello.
00:00:24 Speaker 2: Hi, Paula. How are you?
00:00:26 Speaker 1: I’m cooler than you.
00:00:28 Speaker 2: I think by the time this goes out, this heat wave in the UK will be well and truly just a memory.
00:00:37 Speaker 1: But in the meantime, we have the opposite of a heat wave. And it is sixteen degrees here in Canada. So. And for anybody who thinks, well, it’s Canada. Actually in the summer we typically are having UK weather. So I think we’ve flipped. but weather aside, something that Canadians and Brits love to talk about. We wanted to talk today about perfectionism and how perfectionism has cost us Art as a species, as a community, socially, because there is a cost to perfectionism not only for the individual creative, but there is a cost for us culturally as well.
00:01:17 Speaker 2: the thing that occurred to me when I posted the other day about perfectionism was that still when you talk to kids, when you talk to people who say, I’m no good at art, I can’t draw for toffee. All those things we’ve talked about before, they are still talking about photorealism in school. It’s about copying things going, okay, draw this still life, draw this object. And it’s about mimicry. what I said to you, Paula, was, if right from the get go, from the moment a child is born, they are not asked to draw a house, to draw their family. They’re asked to draw what their family means for them and or draw what your home means to you and explain it. If that was going on right from the get go, then people would have a much broader and a greater understanding of art and therefore would engage with the art world much more, because it wouldn’t be seen just as an elitist thing. And this is why the arts have been devalued, because that’s what people believe are, is they don’t see it as an important comment on society or what’s going on in the world. They just see it as somebody painting a nice picture of what they see, full stop. Only using one sense.
00:02:59 Speaker 1: and being able to recognize as the audience what that thing is as well. Having to show up with finished, high quality, technically skilled pieces from the get go. I think that also perfectionism, lies in how adults view learning. And this comes from obviously from childhood education. But if you think about how children learn before a certain age, they’re open to making things that express what they’re feeling. and what they’re thinking. And they’re not worried as much about turning out something that is skilled. So they don’t look at missing the mark as something that’s the end of whatever. They make a tree a certain way. It didn’t turn out the way they wanted. They just sort of go, well, it’s still a tree, right? Whereas when adults are learning, they want things to be correct, proper, the way they’ve been taught, and they don’t want to have that learning period. I think about when my kids were learning to tie their shoes, they can tie their shoes now. They’re all adults, but it took a while and they didn’t think, oh gosh, it’s too hard, I can’t learn. They went and practiced and practiced and practiced till they got it right, till The knots were tight enough till they were able to make good bows and everything else. They didn’t stop and say, well, I can’t make a bow, so I might as well give up.
00:04:23 Speaker 2: And also they’re not looking to make the perfect tied shoe. They’re not aiming for perfectionism. They’re aiming for function. so that their shoe isn’t going to fall off. So they know the purpose of why they’re doing that because otherwise lock up and they’ll hurt themselves. so it’s about how you tackle things. I mean, I know like particularly around maths and writing, it’s like, just have a go. you learn by your mistakes. That ethos needs to be across the board, but almost like instilled by parents. It’s such a huge, huge subject area because this has been decades and decades of damage, from way back in time. And in fact, a person said to me yesterday, oh, you know, my daughter is she’s an artist. She’s so good at art. She drew a picture. Somebody gave her a photograph and she drew that. I couldn’t believe how brilliant it was. And it’s like. So The knowledge of the parent is. That’s what shows if you’re good at art, if it really, really looks like a photograph. And that is the underlying problem. And it seems so logical. I think we touched on it when we talked about the why, why do you create your art, which we’re always banging on about, but it’s like that people really struggle with that. Even artists, people who’ve trained in the art world. And also, I just want to add, I am not saying that you don’t need to be skilled, you do need to learn how to do things, but that is a skill rather than the artwork itself. just like anything else, you learn how to write what you write about and how far you take it is your choice, and there’d be a lot of people saying, oh, you know, couldn’t write a creative story, couldn’t do this. But they’re writing emails every day of their lives. it just had never occurred to me that understanding why we do stuff, is such a huge part of self development because it’s almost like glossed over and you stumble across it like we did. And it was a bit like I was saying to you, I sent you that quote. The one I said about, this is the list of what, being creative is and there’s a lot of quotes out there about a creative life and it’s all about doing art for yourself, I know when a Paul is really big pet peeves is when people say, oh, art is my therapy, but all these quotes are all about what art will do for you. And I’m not knocking that. That’s part of the process. And if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine. Carry on creating. But if you want to run an art business, you cannot just go on how it affects you because it is suddenly all about your clients and who you’re selling to.
00:07:42 Speaker 1: taking it a step forward or further. one of the things that fee and I keep going back to is mindset. And perfectionism also lies in mindset, imposter syndrome, feeling good enough worrying that you’re not truly an artist. Worrying about being judged even just for how you appear in public. Not to mention showing your art. because there’s always going to be an armchair quarterback making comments when you get big enough, especially. So perfectionism also lies in trying to control how other people react to what you’re putting out. So if you’re feeling unsure, if you’re worried about somebody knocking you down, then you want to show up to the best of your ability to try to prevent that we have right now in society the sense that we can control things. If you’re a good person, bad things won’t happen to you. If you behave in a certain way that society deems acceptable, then you should be able to have an easy life. So any challenge then becomes a reflection on your lack in some way. So if you have a negative reaction to your artwork, then it reflects back on how you are as an artist. I think that also affects the desire to be perfect. And then when you have that desire to be perfect, then you either don’t make the art, so it’s easier to keep it in your head, or you make it and you don’t show it. both of those obviously are different things, but they deprive us from maybe having a different point of view.
00:09:18 Speaker 2: But also it’s making that presumption that if you put your art out there, that the criteria that people are judging it on is perfectionism, So it’s taking that as a given that when people look at art, they’re looking for something that looks exactly like an image. it’s completely overwriting that this is your right to have an opinion. You are painting your opinion. This is what it’s about. And so when people look at it, you should be more worried if they don’t understand what you’re trying to say rather than, oh my God, my five year old could have done better than that. And part of that is that is what a lot of people are doing. So this is why I’m saying this is such a huge subject, because it’s not about just changing our understanding as artists and professional artists and artists that are running a business and want to sell their work. You have got to change everybody’s mindset and understanding of what they do when they look at art. But we can’t solve everything. I know we are trying to set up a revolution, but we can change our selves as artists. I think really weirdly, the fact that I never worried about my lack of skill because it was about what I was going to say. It that seemed like natural to me that it was a tool for casting an opinion. But I know that’s not normal. I’m definitely not normal.
00:11:04 Speaker 1: But you’re not normal in the best way. You show us what’s possible. I know for myself, because I. I’ve been doing portraits since I was in high school. So I think when I was probably fourteen or fifteen, I decided that that was the kind of art I wanted to make. And I have only one high school sketchbook left. after years of moving and everything else. But I know that every time I made a piece when I was in school, I would be getting critiques and feedback. And this is where you missed the mark and whatever. And it made me very anxious about sharing my work. And then, the people around me over the years giving me feedback in an effort to supposedly help, although I think there was at least one or two people who were not helping me.
00:11:49 Speaker 2: exactly what was their motivation? You have to look at the motivation of the person delivering the comment. Yeah, yeah. Which hopefully you’re not doing when you’re young, when you’re a kid and somebody’s going, that’s rubbish. You know, you’re not. You’re really not. Oh it must be. If they’re saying that instead of thinking, well why might they be saying that.
00:12:08 Speaker 1: And where is this coming from?
00:12:09 Speaker 2: A whole list of reasons why they might be saying that.
00:12:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. and so the perfectionism, the desire to show to the best of my ability has been throughout my career as an artist and throughout my experiences as an even when I was an amateur artist, because I wanted to make sure that nobody could say anything about my qualifications to be an artist. But for me, perfectionism drove me to actually improve my skills. I murdered so many canvases to get to the point where I am now, where most pieces turn out. Sometimes they don’t, Or they don’t turn out the way I wanted. But most of them turn out. Now I can sit down and go, from start to finish, I’m pretty confident I will get what I want. But that’s taken me a very, very long time to get there. But there are people whose perfectionism stops them because the idea of what they want to create is so enticing that to put it in the real world and maybe fall short of that, makes them struggle and stop. And I think this is why we have so many people who have this, oh, I’d love to be an artist one day. Or, when I was working in publishing and editing and all that, I had so many people going, I’d love to write a book. And then when they start producing the book, it’s, not the same. What they have in their head is very, very different. It’s because when it’s intangible and an idea, it can be as good or as bad as you want it to be. It’s when you put it in the real world that you have to see where your skills lie and your abilities, and you can only get those through practice. You can’t get them through this desire to show up perfectly. You can’t get this through this desire to try to control how other people see you. which is actually hilariously the theme of my project, which we’ll discuss in a future podcast episode. Having people perceive you in a certain way, you can only control what you put out. But even then, I don’t I’m not sure it matters. People will see you.
00:14:03 Speaker 2: Well, that’s what it just listening to what you were saying then, Paula, it made me think it’s almost like you have to be at peace with your product. You have to be at peace with your work. you can’t afford as a business owner to hate your product or think it’s not good enough. All of that. If you ask anybody who’s got any type of business, whatever, If they believe that the cars they’re selling, the sweets they’re selling are rubbish, then they will struggle to market them and they will struggle to sell them. And it’s the same with your artwork. You need to be at peace. You need to believe in it Like you believe in your child or your children. you believe that they can be whatever they want to be. Your artwork can be whatever you want it to be. And be at peace and be confident about what you’re saying and what your perspective is. if you are clear about what you’re saying, then other people’s opinion ceases to dominate. The reason why you’re showing the work, because I think that’s what it is, is that people over, emphasize other people’s opinions. And although that sounds like a bit of a contradiction because we’ve said, yes, if you’ve got a business, you’ve got to get the confidence of the people. But the whole thing about marketing is persuading people that, Yeah, this has got something to say. And you need this hanging on your wall. I’ve always said as well that the joy of original art, in my opinion, that’s not a print and isn’t a photograph is the fact that there will be what some people might perceive as mistakes. you can’t see me, but I was doing inverted commas there. because that’s the joy of it. That is the wonder of original art. That it’s not perfect. And so let’s embrace that perfectionism.
00:16:08 Speaker 1: if you’ve had any kind of formal education and not just in art, just in general, you’ve had art classes and a little bit of art history. and certain artists are constantly held up as the ideal. But when we see those pieces in school, we see the pieces that were twenty, thirty years into a career. We don’t see their first piece and go, well, that’s a little bit rubbish. We see their pinnacle pieces. so then we have this idea that artists burst out of the seed as immediately skilled and able to produce stuff. we don’t see that growth and those changes over time. One of the things I love about social media is that we have a bigger chance of seeing what goes on behind the scenes in an artist’s world and an artist’s studio. A lot of it’s fake or disingenuine, because people still want to have approval and be lauded for their abilities, but there is more of a chance to see the struggles that artists go through or a little peek in. But as Effie said, if you’re confident in what you’re saying with your art, and this goes back to your why, why are you creating? What are you trying to say? What’s the point of what you’re doing? then it does override a lot of that. Oh, well, you didn’t do the ladybug just right. So, you know, whatever. And then you could say, well, actually ladybug is a symbol for whatever you’re trying to say, like you have the ability even in your head to respond to it. You can’t think your way out of perfectionism. You can’t think, well, gosh, now I’m just going to imagine a shield and go out and make my stuff. You have to practice your way out of it. And there’s a term I used to use years ago, and it’s still relevant today. It’s called being antifragile. So when you create your art, even if you’re not sharing it online, you’re sharing it with maybe family or friends. You have to learn to let some of the stuff that people say wash off or roll off your back. Because as we had said earlier, you have to wonder why they’re saying it. Are they saying it to help you? Are they saying it to hold you back? What are their motivations? Don’t worry about it. Just you learn to do that. You become antifragile over time. Because being in a state of needing to be perfect and controlling how you show up will impact your ability to create art, the art that you actually want to create and to show up in the way that you want to show up. We all have secret desires that we don’t even sometimes admit to ourselves. And the first thing you need to ask yourself if you’re struggling with perfectionism is what do you actually want? How do you want to show up? Why do you need to adhere to rules that you’ve made up? Everything about our lives is made up. Everything our social contracts, our, governing bodies, our religious beliefs, it’s all made up. with no disrespect to anybody, but it is all made up. so if that’s all made up, then the rules you make about how art has to be are also made up. if we’re deconstructing things with this podcast, deconstructing our ideas of misogyny, colonialism, civic structure and whatever, we are going to deconstruct our rules about art to help artists show up
00:19:11 Speaker 2: what a lot of our female listeners will, understand is the progress, but we’ve still got a long way to go of, body image and how women should look we all know how easy it is to say, oh, I don’t care that I’m a few pounds heavier and da da da da da da da. And then we actually give ourselves a hard time in our heads. So we know it’s not easy, just as it isn’t with the way you look as a woman, the way that you show your art as a woman, it’s a similar anxiety and feeling. But the good thing about art is it’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s about the piece of artwork. So you can remove yourself from the equation. Whereas when people are looking at you, if they go, oh, you’ve put on a few pounds, that is personal, but when it’s about your art, it doesn’t have to be personal. So if you say, okay, it’s not for everybody. one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people do, and I did it, Paula did it. And she mentioned it just earlier is we are deluded into thinking that our family and our closest friends are going to be our biggest cheerleaders with our artwork. And that is not the case because a lot of the time it’s a world that they’re not part of that is not your commonality with those people. Other artists? Yes. the first people we tend to show are our nearest and dearest. And if they don’t go, wow, that’s amazing. Or, you could have done this. I mean, I say I still get this now and it still annoys me a bit. when, I get told, I think you need to just have a look at that leg or whatever, you know, and you’re like, you immediately feel your hackles up that somebody is looking and they’re looking with that critical eye. They are looking at the image, not the essence.
00:21:14 Speaker 1: And that would be up to us as artists to educate our audience as we go. So I think we’re going to wrap up this episode here because we’ve covered perfectionism as mindset, perfectionism as a desire to control perception, perfectionism as a construct we come up with and perfectionism as a result of our education, which has been given to us by imperfect people. and I’m hoping that maybe one of those things or more than one of those things will inspire somebody who’s listening to actually just go and make the art, make it imperfectly If you’re painting, celebrate the imperfect brushstrokes or the, slight shake in your lines or whatever. I used to worry about making my paint lie flat and trying to pretend that it wasn’t paint, like making everything like perfectly blended, like you see in the oil paintings from two hundred years ago and galleries and stuff. Now my paint’s lumpy. I mix it on the canvas. You can see the colors that aren’t blended quite and all of that. It’s great fun. Leaning into being imperfect is actually so freeing.
00:22:22 Speaker 2: And that’s what makes you authentically you. Just like we said, it’s about being in throughout your life. You need to be as authentic as you possibly can without obviously, you know, to the detriment of anybody else. And that’s the same with your art. You saying you were trying to make your art look like because you thought you believed that these paintings from the nineteenth century is what you thought your portraits should have looked like, but you’ve leant into your own style, you’ve embraced it, you’ve gone with it, you’ve developed it, and that’s what makes you look at Paula’s portraits. And you can know it’s been done by Paula because you can recognise her style.
00:23:05 Speaker 1: that’s really important, especially in an age of AI, where, yes, the bubble is starting to burst now and hopefully it will go. But in the meantime, it’s going to be the humanity that we put into our art that makes it stand out. So I think that’s it. Unless there’s anything else you want to add?
00:23:25 Speaker 2: No, I think we’ve done. But I’m sure we will come back to this subject because I find it so fascinating.
00:23:32 Speaker 1: Yes. And if you’re struggling with perfectionism or even imposter syndrome or mindset, we’d love to have you, make a comment, let us know what you’re struggling with, and maybe we can use some of the ideas to create another podcast so that we can actually address what’s going on. I think it would be interesting. And of course, we wouldn’t name anybody. So you can feel free to comment as you will. And that’s it for this episode of Art crush. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, audible, Iheartpodcast, and wherever your favorite podcast streaming platforms are. New episodes come out every Saturday, UK time, and we will see you in the next episode.
