Apparently Picasso once said you’re not a fully realised artist until you've painted 500 paintings.
Whether he actually said it or not, I like the idea.
The same theory exists in music. You're not really a musician until you've played 500 gigs.
I've done both.
More than 500 gigs. More than 500 paintings. And the interesting thing is, I don't feel like I've arrived anywhere.
I just feel less frightened of not knowing what I'm doing.
There is something about repetition that can't be taught.
You can read about painting. Study colour. Watch someone drag a brush across a canvas and explain exactly why they're doing it.
But none of that replaces painting number 347 when you've just destroyed the best part of the work and have no fucking idea what to do next.
The same was true with music.
The first gigs were full of self-consciousness. Where do I stand? What do I say?
What if I forget the words? What if they hate us?
Then you play another gig. And another.
You play to twelve people on a Wednesday night. You play to a full room.
You play brilliantly and nobody cares. You play terribly and someone tells you it changed their life.
Eventually, you stop trying to control the response.
That's where the work begins.
Five hundred isn't a magical number.
Painting number 501 doesn't suddenly arrive with a certificate declaring you an artist.
The point is volume. Repetition. Failure.
The sheer number of times you've had to begin again. Because after 500 paintings, you've probably made some dreadful ones.
You've repeated yourself. You've copied yourself. Become bored with yourself.
You've accidentally made something brilliant and then spent six months unsuccessfully trying to do it again.
You've learned that one good painting proves almost nothing.
A body of work is different. It's evidence.
I've been thinking about this recently because I can feel my paintings changing again.
The vessels. The pools. Strange little marks and symbols. Things I don't completely understand yet.
Years ago, I might have worried about that.
I might have tried to return to something that had already worked.
But 500 paintings teach you something.
You don't find your voice by protecting it but by using it. Again and again and again.
Until it cracks. You're bored. Until something unexpected slips through.
That's what 500 gigs taught me too.
The song is never the same song once you've played it hundreds of times.
And the artist isn't the same artist either.
You don't become fully realised because you've mastered something.
You become fully realised when you've failed enough times to stop being frightened of the next one.
Five hundred paintings. Five hundred gigs.
I'm still getting lost.
I'm just more comfortable with the idea that this is the point.