The Slow Art Revolution — Because Instant Results Are a Scam

You're listening to the Savvy Painter podcast, Episode 344. Hello, my friend. Welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter podcast. I am your host, Antrese Wood, and if you've been listening for a while, welcome back. If you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you found the podcast.

Savvy Painter is the place for artists who want practical, tactical tips to create a meaningful art practice that is both fulfilling and supports you.

So, it has been a wild couple of weeks. I went to New York and had a meetup with Growth Studio members, and it was absolutely amazing to be able to meet so many people that I work with I see multiple times a week, and have for years—virtually, that is. I've been meeting with this group of people for years on Zoom—many of them, some of them for a month, some of them for a couple of months. But it was just unbelievable to actually get to give people hugs and share meals, to get to hang out with them in person. It was just an absolute blast.

I want to give a big thank you to Mary and Greg for opening their home and to Jess for helping us get through New York and all the subways, and all of the ideas and things that we could have, should have done while we were there. But we got to go to a bunch of museums. We went to the Met, we went to the Whitney, we went to the Brooklyn Museum. Some of us went to MoMA. We went to the Neue Galerie and saw an amazing collection of Klimt paintings.

It was just, all in all, an incredible three days of looking at art, talking about art, hanging out, and really bonding as a group and a community. I think that this group has already bonded incredibly well, but to be able to do it in person was just absolutely beyond special. So, I'm still kind of on a high off of that. It was absolutely wonderful. It was the first time I've been able to pull that off, and it just seemed like everything lined up so perfectly. So, super happy about that.

This week on the podcast, we are going to talk about part of the process of making art, and what I wanted to really focus on today is a sort of a response to some of the comments that I was hearing while I was together with Growth Studio members, and I see it online and I hear it constantly, which is kind of this idea that artists are feeling like they're behind and that they should be further along than they are.

I wanted to come at this topic from a very particular angle, and that angle is this: Art is not meant to be fast. It is a slow, thoughtful, and meditative process. That's why this episode is important, because we are living in a world where everything moves so quickly, especially with social media. So often, artists feel really pressured to create work quickly and fast and to be constantly posting and to be constantly having something new.

So, this episode explores why embracing slowness is both essential for the process and the outcome of your work.

So here's the deal: We've been conditioned by our culture to equate speed with success. There's this whole hustle culture and this whole idea that time is money and that when we are not making money, we're wasting time. That the faster we work, the more productive we seem, and the more money we supposedly make. That's kind of what society expects. But when it comes to art, in my opinion, this mindset doesn't quite fit.

Art is meant to be savored, thought about, and created in its own time. I understand that this pressure to move fast feels very real, but I just want to show you the kind of trance that you're under. We have inherited these ideas about how we think about time and how we think about money, and it greatly impacts your art-making. Also, it impacts how you feel when you're making your art.

So let's unpack this a little bit. For me personally, the beauty of art is in its slowness, in how we need to slow down in order to make it. We slow our gaze, we slow our thoughts. When we're creating our best art, I think we are just present in that moment. There are no other thoughts other than what we are currently doing on the canvas, on the paper, or in whatever medium that we're working in.

That’s the joy of creating art. That is the beauty of it. It is that it takes us out of our day-to-day, or maybe it puts us in our day-to-day just a little bit deeper, but it slows everything down. In that regard, I think it's the antithesis of this hustle culture that we live in.

We're surrounded with messages and ideas and media that tell us to work harder, work faster, be more efficient, get things done. That does have its place, but not at the exclusion of our enjoyment of what it is that we're doing.

As artists, I think we have a very unique position in that what we do is something that we care deeply about. We love what we do. It is part of our spiritual practice. It's part of our being. It's part of who we are as human beings.

So to apply that sort of hustly attitude to it—the hustliness—to creating art, I think, is problematic. Because creating art, to me, is a slow process. Even when you're doing something like gestural drawing, even when you're doing quick studies or quick sketch sessions, the act of creating—whatever you're creating—does require you to slow down and really look or really consider what that mark is that you're making or what that idea is that you are expressing.

The thing is, I hear a lot of artists talk about how they wish they could paint faster, they wish things were going faster, they think they're slow painters. Personally, I'm a very slow painter. I take my time, and I'm not rushed whatsoever.

I think that the idea that we are somehow behind comes from this concept that we're supposed to be creating quickly and efficiently, and we should be machines about it. The fact that creating art is a slow process, and sometimes our ideas need time to percolate and to develop over extended periods of time, like months and months, if not years, that's not actually a problem.

But because of the fixation on this idea that time is money, and faster is better, and you "have to" have something to post every day if you're on social media—preferably three times a day—it creates this delusion among artists that whatever they're doing is too slow, that they're behind, that they're not doing enough.

The problem I see with that is that it shifts the measuring stick. It's no longer about the art. It's about the instant gratification and the desire for a big dopamine rush from posting and having what I call your own little juried show. Like, you post something up on Instagram and immediately people are like, "Okay, did people like it? Did I get enough likes? Are people commenting?"

It's almost like you're waiting for the jury of Instagram to tell you whether or not it is a good painting. That’s just the wrong measuring stick to use when you are assessing your art or you're assessing your capacity as an artist.

I know that it's really, really easy to get caught up in thinking that you need to post every day, or even multiple times a day, just to stay relevant. When you see other artists doing this, you start to believe that art is something that you need to churn out constantly, every day. That’s the false narrative social media creates.

I mean, yes, paint every day, draw every day, work every day if you have the means to do that, but that doesn't mean that you have to create something amazing and have your own little shows every single day.

One of the things that we talk about very often inside of Growth Studio is this idea that there are seasons to how we create and to our production. So there's making the art, there's showing the art, and there's selling the art.

Within making the art, I break that into two pieces. One is when you are in this sort of exploratory or developmental phase. Then you might, from that exploratory, developmental stage, find a thread and go after it and really kind of dig into an idea. Then you might go into the developmental production phase, let's call it.

And there are times when you might be producing a ton of work and you might want to post that on social media. That is fantastic. I'm not talking about any of that. What I'm talking about is the pressure that we often feel as artists to push something out no matter what.

The stress that I see so many artists under when they are trying to maintain this "presence" on social media—meaning they have to constantly post—what that does is it creates that sensation that you're in some sort of a race, that you are constantly working against yourself.

What that looks like is when artists use social media feedback to measure their success, what this does is it shifts the focus from creating meaningful work to seeking instant gratification. That’s the part where I see a lot of artists just getting off track.

When you believe this idea that you need to work faster, what it does is it leads to frustration. It creates mental blocks, and it has you feeling like you're not moving fast enough or producing enough, because there's this idea that there's this clock that's ticking and that you have to keep up with it.

The focus shifts from creating the work to that clock. Or the focus shifts from creating the work to: Have I posted on social media enough? What am I going to post today? What am I going to post this week?

It completely shifts what you're thinking about away from the very art that you're creating. That's where the mental blocks come from. Because if what your brain is focused on, what your mind is telling you, is that there's this clock ticking, and that people will forget about you, or they'll lose interest, or whatever it is that you believe will happen if you don't post often enough and fast enough.

It's like people are afraid that if I don't post all the time, I'm suddenly going to become irrelevant. That's where the problems come in. Because when you believe this idea that the way that you're working isn't correct, that it has to be faster, that there's something wrong with you or wrong with your process, or wrong with the art that you're making, that you haven't completed enough in this arbitrary piece of time that you've given yourself.

Creating art isn't about how fast you can paint an image or how fast you can finish a piece. It's about being present in the process. If you are constantly racing against an imaginary clock, you miss the beauty of what you're creating. You lose sight of the depth and the meaning that comes from slowing down.

Thinking that you should be faster than you are creates unnecessary stress. It can make you feel like you're always behind. But that is simply not true. When you feel like you're always behind, you will paint from a place of scarcity. When you feel like you're always behind, you make more mistakes because you're trying to rush things. You're painting from a place of fear rather than being in touch with yourself.

You tend to overthink the painting instead of just knowing what the painting needs. Instead of being in communication with the painting, your brain is off outside, worried about what's happening on social media and what will happen if you don't post often or fast enough.

So, I know I'm making social media out to be the bad guy here, it's not. It's how we think about social media, and how, oftentimes, artists will get lost in social media rather than using social media for their advantage, rather than using social media for themselves, they become these sort of automated content creators. Your art isn't content to be digested daily by the machine. You're not an entertainer. That's the biggest difference.

The truth is, is that art is a journey. It's not a race. The slowness of art is what makes it so beautiful and so meaningful.

When you take your time, when you give yourself permission to connect with your work, to truly explore it, and to discover something new in the process, then you can allow yourself to get lost in a painting. And you can allow yourself to discover what it is that you are making this painting for, what you are making the painting for, not because you need something to post today. You're not going to rush what you're doing in order to hit an arbitrary deadline. You're not going to say something is finished or just be like, “Okay, I needed something to post today so that’s it.”

That's the difference. It's a huge one. Because that decision to be "done" with the painting or to throw it out there comes from a place of fear, and it comes from that place of scarcity. Or it comes from a place that isn't authentic, which is very different from the excitement that you feel when you create something that you are just absolutely in love with, and you want to share.

That's the big difference. You can't rush the art and expect it to carry the same weight, the same emotion, the same depth. The process of creating it is what makes the final piece so meaningful.

Listening to your voice, not your fear. Connecting to that human heart of yours that we all want to hear from, that's what makes your art so beautiful. Not the machine that tells you to post.

I wanted to make this episode because I feel like people need this reminder that you are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be. And your work is valuable because it's done with care. It's done with attention. And it's done with intention.

It's thoughtful and deliberate. When your art is created that way, that is how you, what I call slowing down to speed up, you will actually create more art that you are in love with. You will create more art that is meaningful to you and to the people who care about your art.

So the question then becomes, “How do I reclaim the time and the space for this art?” How do we do that when there's so much obsession with speed, with this instant gratification, and getting things up quickly? The first thing is kind of the obvious, which is to set boundaries with social media. I mean, decide on purpose how much time you want to spend online, and stick to it.

It's not just that actual time that you're spending looking at other people's work or scrolling through your social media of choice. It's the time that you spend preparing for it, the time that you spend thinking about it, the time that you spend planning and worrying about it, and checking whether or not people like your work.

So decide ahead of time, “I'm going to spend X amount of time on social media. That time is going to include me taking the photos, me writing the post, me responding to any comments that people made.” That is a good use of social media, rather than the sort of obsession that we get into.

So set that boundary with yourself and decide with intention how much time you want to devote to it. Then, focus on your process. Let yourself really enjoy the journey of creating your art rather than obsessing over the final product because you will get there faster that way. Give yourself permission to work slowly. It’s okay to take your time. Your art deserves it.

Notice when you are comparing yourself to other artists. You're not in a race. Your journey is unique. So knowing that will help you focus on the things that matter most to you, not what other people are doing.

So those are four quick steps that you can take to reclaim that space: Setting boundaries. Focusing on your process. Giving yourself permission to work at whatever speed you work at. And knowing that that’s how you work. It's okay to take your time. You and your art deserve it. And finally, stop comparing yourself to other artists. You're not in a race.

Art is slow, and that's the beautiful thing. It takes time. It takes thought. And it takes reflection. It is not meant to be rushed.

So remember to embrace the process—your process—the way that you create your work, and let yourself have it. Don't let that pressure to produce quickly, from social media or any other outside source, distract you from the real work of creating your art.

You're not behind. You're creating something meaningful. And that takes time. So next time you sit down to create, slow down, enjoy the process, and know that your art is exactly where it needs to be.

All right, my friends. That is what I have for you this week. I hope you have a fabulous week. I hope you can really enjoy being present with your work, taking your time, and just loving what you do. Have a great week, everybody.

If you want to take what you're learning here on the Savvy Painter Podcast even further, join us in Growth Studio. Growth Studio is a unique community of artists. We meet multiple times a week for live coaching, critiques, and demos. Just go to savvypainter.com/join.