Good Work Takes Time

   A lot of the things I do or have done take time. That quilt that took me 6 months to do could not have been done in a weekend and look the way it does now. That wedding cake isn't just the decorating. It is the hours spent designing, working with the customer, shopping for ingredients, baking the cake, delivering, and in previous times, practicing. I had heard the phrase "Good work takes time" from a friend who said her grandma would say that. It applies to many things that if they are "worth doing are worth doing well" (not sure who said that).

We live in an instant culture. Many expect things to get done fast and still be quality. We see on tv how a painting can be started and finished in a half hour segment. People go to the paint and drink events in the evening and come home with a finished painting. On the Internet you see somebody blast through their creation using high speed editing and cutting out the down time. Even the Plein Air events have a "quick paint" to challenge you to get a finished painting in 2 hours or less.

GOOD WORK TAKES TIME!

I really hate the phrases, "Artsy fartsy" or "slapping some paint around", because it seems to demean the creation aspects of art. On the remodeling tv shows they show people how "anyone can creat art" by having them slap some paint on a stretched canvas and hanging it on the wall. While there may be some with an eye for balance and color, they are saying that anyone can do it because there is nothing to art and no knowledge or practice is required. I had a framer friend who did not value water color paintings because she thought everything they did was fast and therefore was cheap or low value.

To me, Good Work Takes Time,  involves being honest with what was involved to do their creation. Usually there is a lot of practice to be able "to whip something off". There may have been years of practice, observation, mistakes to get to the point where you may be fast because you already have an idea in your mind, have already done the problem-solving, sketches and color studies. Last summer I painted Chippewa Falls, Wi. I think I have 4 paintings of the Glen Loch dam. The first one took a while because I was taking in all the details. After I painted that one I looked at it from different sides so I could see what the trees were covering up. I tried something I didn't normally do - painting with a palette knife. I did a close-up view and then did one abstracted with patterns. The final ones got faster because I had already worked out the problems. I have been painting for quite a few years but had a gap of not painting much because of family issues for about 10 years. I had to spend time getting my skills back. If I had just thought I could do this project and whip things off they would have looked very amateurish.

My bricklayer son-in-law reminded me that the things that are quality now will be quality in the future. Even if a piece of work takes longer than you would have liked it  will show that it was not rushed. While there may be some that do not take as long or your purpose was to have broad brush strokes and fill that canvas, it always has that bedrock of your studies experiements and time spent beneath it.