As I struggle with a plate that just won't come out right, I'm reminded of a piece of advice an art teacher gave me when I was in college. She was small and spry and wore hats made of bright yarn that came to a point on the top of her head, like a Hershey's Kiss. She had a German accent and paint under her fingernails.
One day in class she watched as I painted out a large section of something I had been working on for a week. "Why did you do that?" she asked.
"It didn't look the way I wanted."
"It's not important that it look the way you want it to look. It's only important that it say the thing you want it to say."
And it's true, I think. I almost never make something that looks the way it looks in my head, a perfect copy of an idea or hope or aspiration. I make the best representation of that idea that I am able, and I stop when it begins to give off a sense of that feeling that I have when I imagine my idea, that feeling beyond words and my own capacity as a draftsman.
So that's where I'm going with this one. It won't look how I want it to look, and it won't be anything I planned on making, but if I'm lucky, it might speak to the viewer of the small truth I had in mind when I decided to make it.
