What's wrong with this picture?

At least its not sad-eyed bulls goring crying orphans...

A Rainbow bee-eating disaster - watercolor by author

The answer to the title question is, “a lot.”

There are countless things wrong with this painting.

First off, the colors and composition are a terrible insult to the incredibly sweet beauty of the Australian Rainbow Bee-eater which I have in some wild spat of unparalleled vanity and chutzpah deigned to imitate here like some ham-fisted troglodyte. I might as well have painted them with a toilet brush. I have only succeeded in destroying an otherwise perfectly fine sheet of Arches 150lb watercolor paper.

So, I confess.

I dared to entertain the rare few, if not winsome memories I have of seeing this majestic bird in flight in the Australian bush as a teenager. We used to call them “creels” – mostly because of the sound they made while streaking overhead toward some distant tree. It was a beautiful, sonorous kind of high-frequency burble, almost sounding like someone singing, “Creeeee-eel” as they flew by. They have a slightly different call whilst perched.

At the time, I didn’t know what kind of bird it was, as I’d never seen one before. I was so excited seeing one that I called up my best friend and adventure partner to come to the exact location where I observed them a few weeks later. We were both lucky as we were able to spot them again – just at a distance and only for short glimpses.

The last time (and likely, for the last time in my life) that I got to see one in person was in captivity, at a zoo near Alice Springs in the Northern territory of Australia back in 2010. Even photos cannot do this bird justice. In many ways, they’re like observing hummingbirds – catching the sun at just the right angle reveals even more subtle hints of cerulean blue, stunning teal and iridescent orange.

You can take a look at them here: https://birdlife.org.au/bird-profiles/rainbow-bee-eater/#

So yes, my painting is flat, unimaginative and horribly executed. I stopped myself doing anything more to it as there were just too many mistakes. In my defense, my absentia from any kind of art has lasted 30 years almost to the month. For a time in my 20’s and 30’s, I painted airbrush murals on cars and a few aircraft, but I was mostly found drawing cartoons and portrait-style caricatures of people who wanted them. I’ve had a few cartoons published – mostly in technical / hobby magazines, so my recent rekindling of artistry has been rather harsh and rude.

To the paper that is.

And watercolor? Could I have picked a more finicky, ill-tempered, and viciously unpredictable media? Probably not, unless you consider CNN or Al-Jazeera as media, but I digress. Only one thing worked the way I wanted it to in this monstrosity – the blending of the green to white on the chest. But the fade should have been from green to yellow green. The rest is quite frankly, an unmitigated disaster. It’s reticent of a 1970’s paint-by-numbers from some awkward middle-aged denizen of a rotary club struggling to find something creative to do because smart phones and cat videos were still 30 years into the future.

I show this particular disaster here for a couple reasons.

The first is that I’m actually finding it rather enjoyable to torture expensive paper. Mostly because I get to do it with my wife. We truly enjoy our artwork time together, but this paper is rather expensive – it’s from France you know – and you simply must say the brand name, “Arches” correctly, with the requisite air of arty superiority. Not because they’ve been around 600 plus years or more, but because you can’t be accepted as an artist otherwise. To pronounce it correctly, you must lift your head, tilting just ever so slightly to one side, as if questioning a 6-year-old after catching them with their hands in the cookie jar. Note: they simply MUST see your nostrils when you say, “Arsh.”

That’s right, ‘Arches’ is pronounced like you are saying, “Arsh.”

So don’t be a rube, or an uncultured American beast and say “Arch-ez” because not only will you NOT be granted permission to buy this horrifically expensive paper, but someone in France will hear you and write your name down in a book. And if you ever dare to set foot on French soil, volunteers from the Arches Legionnaires will swiftly and expertly send you back to that Louisiana swamp from whence you spawned. But not before the French foreign minister of correct pronunciation has had a few words with you.

“Now, begone! Or I shall taunt you a second time, eh?” – Monty Python.

Also in my defense, feeble as it is, the only art instruction I have received is from the 1970’s. Some of you may remember finger painting. Watercolors were considered the high school version of finger painting. My wife has been enjoying her colored pencil set I bought for her birthday, so I figured since I had used a limited number of watercolors in my cartoons for skies and backgrounds, I’d just go get an inexpensive watercolor set to play with while she colored, right?

Right?

Inexpensive? Not so much. Well, if anything good has come from this ill-advised foray back into creativity, is that the “fine art supply” store owner actually smiles at me when I walk through the door now. We’re not on a first-name basis yet, but if I keep insisting on entertaining this dull fantasy of mine, it shouldn’t take much longer.

The second reason I dared to push this abomination in front of you is to illustrate a societal problem we should all be interested in fixing.

I’ll begin by stating that I know that I will never draw, write or craft anything that I’m totally happy with. There’s always something I could’ve done better. Some artwork is circulating out there somewhere that I was at one time pleased with, but not totally happy with. Drawing, painting, crafting is much like martial arts training in so many ways. There’s always someone better than you, there’s always a technique or kata or form that you admire but can never seem to do quite as well as that girl at the dojo, or that guy you sparred with last week.

I spent many years training in several martial art styles, but never felt I’d ‘arrived’ – I was pleased with some progress, but never truly happy with my skills. Because all I had to do was watch a Bruce Lee performance and I knew I had lightyears to go still. And really, if we take the time to admire someone else’s art or creativity or discipline, it’s a feedback process – a way of honest evaluation if we’re open to it. Sometimes it can be discouraging, other times encouraging.

This is where people come in.

You can watch videos for hours and hours, but this is only a fraction of what we each need to improve. Videos and movies are fine for inspiration, ideas and even some encouragement, but they are poor evaluators.  Proverbs 27:17 may no longer see the light of day in our education system, but it is one I have tried to live by most of my adult life;

“Iron sharpens iron,
    and one man sharpens another.”

Nobody paints a masterpiece out of the cradle. It takes years of training your eyes and mind and hand to be masterful with the brush - and how are we to learn, if not from others with mastery? Nobody becomes a master in the mainstream martial arts without years of training, discipline and practice under a master. Yet I’ve seen parents get angry because instructors didn’t promote their kid to the next belt. Our culture does not value disciplined growth and instead promotes and glorifies instant success, instant gratification.

Throngs of students coming through our ‘educational’ system have been cheated of a truly liberal education and instead, have been force-fed political indoctrination and groomed into toxic idealogues who can’t possibly succeed because, well, those greedy white patriarchal oppressors have taken it all, dontchyaknow?

Missing from their comprehension and experience are the decades of struggle and effort required to achieve mastery in their chosen field or discipline. So many have been brainwashed into thinking their college degree is all they need; that they’re set now. They believe that they have crossed the golden finish line. Almost all of them today have been praised and coddled throughout their school experience; nary a harsh word spoken about their performance. They’ve passed every exam regardless of their subject comprehension and now they’re angry that nobody will pay them a six-figure salary and put them in a corner office with scenic views.

And those that do land a decent job are aghast at being required to actually work 10 and sometimes 12 hours a day, but that’s another essay for another time.

This is the predictable and expected outcome when we pretend that performance, capacity, comprehension and craft don’t matter, and we replace performance standards with imaginary principles, like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It is the expected and predictable outcome when we scoff at standards as somehow being racist or somehow biased then dispense with them in favor of a make-believe value system that is extremely racist and ends up only promoting mediocrity.

Improvement never comes with ease, comfort and political ideology. Improvement in any field that I’ve ever participated in requires a lot of effort, dedication and often both physical and mental struggle. Sometimes you just want to quit. Other times you get frustrated because you don’t see any improvement, or you’re not getting better fast enough. There may be brief periods of delight, but soon enough you’re back into a grind to improve, to learn, to grow.

If we lose the ability to both give and receive feedback, then choose to become isolated islands of mediocrity – each person only seeing excellence in their own eyes, never realizing true potential, never pushing the envelope to master their craft, never being truly trained and never being able to train others.

If there’s anything of value in this pitiful watercolor painting of mine – it’s the wonderful opportunity to work with others on improving; to learn from my own mistakes and the mistakes of others, and to see not just negative aspects, but positive ones from someone else’s perspective. It’s an opportunity to discuss what I could do better!

I wish our culture valued Proverbs 27:17 because to do the opposite dooms us to stagnation and mediocrity.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing. Schools, parents and businesses are lauding and showering kids and workers with praise when they should be upholding standards and encouraging improvement. Somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to give and receive criticism.  As a consequence, our culture values victimhood and promotes finding ways to be offended or offended on behalf of someone else. Our culture is now stuck on the offense Olympics track.

I personally think artwork and artistry is an area where this kind of DEI lunacy was incubated.  Artistry somehow got gifted with a free pass, the kind of free pass that you might hear from time to time making excuses for poorly executed work that looks like poorly executed work.

“Ohh, that’s so beauuuuuutiful!” come the breathless exclamations. Only, there you stand next to them and all you see is paint spatter and mostly stained white canvas. “Oh! Look at that movement! Look at the tragedy of the tortured soul buried under those violent strokes; a prison cell crafted in the stifling blight of Payne’s Gray – yet bursting forth into the embrace of light through crimson trial!”

But the real story is that a ladder got knocked over. Two cans of paint and a loaded spray gun exploded into a colorful frenzy, all of it dropping onto a really old canvas tarpaulin as the ‘artist’ remodeled their kitchen. The ‘crimson trial’ turns out to be 15-year-old redwood stain, and those “violent” strokes are the marks left behind after cleaning brushes.

Yet, for a mere twenty grand, it can be yours.

You think I jest? Take a moment to wander through these ‘masterpieces’ and savor the memory of their sheer banality with the reminder that not a single one sold for less than a million dollars.

https://www.elitereaders.com/ridiculous-paintings-insanely-sold-for-millions-dollars/

This is what happens when mediocrity becomes celebrated. Mediocrity is lofted to airy heights by the suspension of critical thinking and rational evaluation (which, *gasp* you simply cannot have in art, don’t you know?) and propelled by the pitiful psychology of group-identity elitism and mass delusion. Anyone lavishing praise on those ‘works’ is adored and celebrated as daring savants, visionaries or gifted art critics, while anyone asking what the big deal is gets labeled a gauche, knuckle-dragging redneck and quickly ushered out the backdoor.

You beast, you. Go juggle some grenades.

The art that has seemingly been lost here is the art of speaking the truth in love. It’s the art of encouraging someone while letting them know they still need work. Lying to your friends, relatives, art-store buddies and online pals doesn’t help anyone. It may seem to please them and please yourself, but the reality is that you have lied to them and cheated them out of something truly helpful. You also cheat yourself out of practicing the fine art of disciplined encouragement. Simply lavishing praise on someone whose work is sub-par is just plain lazy, it’s effortless and meaningless. Fake praise is cowardly and hollow – and all it produces is mediocrity in both effort and result.

When you give honest feedback, you certainly do risk hurting someone’s feelings. You may end up losing a few friends along the way, but after all these years I can honestly tell you, those who “unfriend” you weren’t your friends to begin with. At least not the kind you’d want to be around when things actually do matter. Or do you really think they’d stick around when you’re in the midst of a storm of trouble and you actually need someone to tell you the truth?

If your ‘friends’ can’t handle some honest feedback, then I’ll be honest here: get new friends. You’ll thank me later. Now take a long look in the mirror, can you handle some honest feedback, or do you fly off the handle and stamp your little feet when someone tells you, “Sorry, but I think it still needs work?”

If you aren’t mature enough to handle honest feedback, then you need to do some growing before showing. 

I know it hurts. Sometimes your artwork really does pull a total vacuum (that’s pastor-speak for ‘sucks’), like this tragic pair of Rainbow Bee-eaters I painted last month. I know it’s a horror show, and I know I need more training and more years of experience to get to some place where I’ll be less discouraged and more pleased. I watch YouTube videos of folks who seem to work effortlessly with these demonically possessed watercolors and produce beautiful landscapes and paintings in little more than a few hours.

I’m nowhere near their level, but I’d like to get there. That’s what I’d like to be able to do – to paint in this medium with a measure of mastery and skill. In order to get there, I must be willing to accept criticism and feedback, but also be confident enough to know I can improve with diligence. Maybe I can be comparable with today’s masters at some point, maybe I won’t. Either way, it’ll require a lot of effort and only time will tell. There will be struggles and likely not just a little frustration. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach that place where I’m at minimum, pleased with my own work, but I am pleased to try.

What I do know over these years is that the common thread to ‘getting there’, like the common thread to success, is honest feedback from honest people and pushing ahead.

There’s nothing worse than a life lived in self-delusion; a bubble fantasy, believing oneself to be great, but never realizing the success that you believe should be rightfully yours. There are countless people who live in this kind of bubble, and it is often tragic and sometimes quite violent when they are inevitably confronted with reality because they refuse to approach a mirror and instead blame others. We have legions of them protesting on campuses and blocking roads. We even have some running the local fire board.

They may be encouraged to live as long as they like in their bubbles by our present culture, but don’t be fooled. Their failure to reckon with reality will not only affect their own life, but it will also affect yours.

Today it is uncommon to find people willing and able to speak the truth in love, just as it is uncommon to find introspective honesty from our leaders, so-called. Public discourse has degenerated into either full-on character assassination or feedback that’s so couched with petty appeasements it turns into squeamish drivel. So many have fallen into the game of attempting to score ‘points’ than engaging in meaningful dialogue to get to the heart of the matter that many resign themselves from so much as engaging at all.

Over the last several months, I have watched the American social media microcosm unfold here in our little neck of the woods with the local residents. There is much to do over this Fire Board fracas, but it has been quite illustrative of where we’re at in society.

We may not arrive at a perfect solution, we may not even arrive at a solution we may be pleased with. More importantly, I hope we can all be pleased to continue to work on it together.