A lesson in necessity
"You make art in 20-minute snatches, and you don’t, like, fiddle around."
“I don’t have time” is a common refrain for why we don’t make room for the things we enjoy in our daily lives. By the time we’re done with everything we feel we have to do, we’re genuinely out of time or just too tired to use our creative brains.
But what if we stopped trying to set aside hours for writing or drawing or yoga or gardening and instead thought about the minutes where we could add a couple words, “make 3 lines on your drawing” or practice a new pose?
In a conversation with Muriel Murch, Eleanor Coppola talked about doing what’s possible in the time you have:1
“The men artists I knew had a studio, and they went out to their studio, and they spent the day, and worked, and then they came back. I once read a book by Judy Chicago, who interviewed all these women artists, and they made their art on the back porch, they made it on top of the washing machine, they made it next to the kitchen sink, and they made it anywhere they could, for the hour and a half while their kid was taking a nap, and for the two hours while they were at the play group. They made it in between. It wasn’t, like, you get to make art for eight hours. You make art in 20-minute snatches, and you don’t, like, fiddle around. I know one time I went to see Francis in his working room, and he had his pencils all laid out, and his espresso there, and there was this whole little ritual of getting into yourself and into your work. There was no time [for women] for the ritual of getting into your work! You just snapped into that taking 10 minutes and making 3 lines on your drawing or whatever was possible.”
It’s no surprise that necessity is not the father of invention, but regardless of gender or parental status, waiting to find the right conditions for your next creative pursuit is a surefire way to miss out on wrong turns, happy accidents, and the diamonds in the mess.
Don’t concern yourself with the end result today. Just draw the next line.