Being not very good at something

Recently, I’ve taken up painting leaves. It began when I went to a workshop a few weeks ago by Dr Tabatha Forbes, a New Zealand botanical artist. She is a really wonderful painter but also a wonderful human. She began the workshop, held down the road in Miramar at the Wellington Art Club, by talking about botanical art as being a deeply spiritual practice – the ability to study closely the beauty in a single leaf and experience the awe and wonder that comes with such an experience. I felt a homecoming in her words.

But… getting into the whole botanical art thing was a liiiittle bit more difficult. Botanical art is an extremely old historical practice that was used to help identify plant species for medicinal and scientific purposes – before cameras came along. As such, it includes capturing a certain level of detail and accuracy. The difficult thing about this is that, on first attempt, you tend to create a green, sad smudgy-looking thing that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the beautiful specimen in front of your eyes. As a recovering perfectionist, I ended up finding this extremely frustrating and wanted to screw up my painting and throw it across the room like a child – alas, we adults have to be so much more sensible, but the feeling is still the same!

While I’ve been practicing since and have gotten better, I’ve realised that I don’t actually need to create something perfectly accurate – and maybe that’s not my style! At the same time, there is a level of patience and humility you have to have when you’re just not very good at something… easier said than done. I’ve heard of many artists who create incredible paintings who mostly reject the idea of innate talent and say that they just worked really hard, but I think we like to believe in innate talent – it allows us to give up on things if they aren’t immediately easy.

So I am trying to yield my natural stubbornness to continue this leaf-painting practice because I enjoy it! And dwelling in places that bring forth our own joy is just a great place to start.