This post was partly inspired by learning that the art teacher for my partner’s beginner drawing class recently decided to hang everyone’s work on the wall and have the students vote off pieces one by one (with a candy prize for the “best” piece), a move so infuriating it nearly renders me speechless. But only nearly.
In 2019, I attended a four-day oil painting workshop with my mom. She wanted to get more experience in traditional painting to help her with the encaustic workshops she sometimes taught, and I wanted to learn a new medium.
Every other student in the class was a middle-aged woman, and they each had a tragic backstory to share. On the first day of class, everyone shared about their background in art, and it seemed as if every single student had some horror story of a teacher that had decimated their self worth at the beginning of their journey. One woman spoke of a professor that would take one painting from a student every class and throw it in the garbage. The idea, I suppose, was that this tough love taught you to do better work and not let yourself off the hook. One woman switched to a gentler major. Another was too timid to create art for years, and had only just taken it up again in a home studio. They crafted beautifully colored pears on a variety of canvases, and still I heard them biting back self-criticism as they worked.
I’d like to say these methods are antiquated, but while it’s generally considered less appropriate to scream at your students or throw their work away, I still see the underlying attitude preserved so often in how we approach art, both in teaching and creating it. I once watched a YouTube video of a young woman discussing her experience pursuing a master’s in theatre, and her voice shook as she spoke of a time when her teacher tore down her acting methods in front of the entire class and then reprimanded her for crying and trying to defend herself. But this story wasn’t shared as an example of poor teaching; no, at the end of the video, she smiled wanly and said she would try to do better next time. Being a student with things to learn was her fault, of course. How stupid that she should want the freedom to make mistakes without being shamed for it.
I think there is a philosophy in art that the objective of the artist is to push beyond limits, both in oneself and in the world. That’s great, if you’re a seasoned professional trying out a new poetry format or writing a challenging topic into your play. But this idea is so often twisted to mean that artists must wring themselves dry until their most vulnerable parts are exposed. You aren’t allowed to create in a flawed way, with imperfect proportions or derivative ideas—after all, it’s only by tearing down the weak parts of yourself that the strong vulnerability beneath will flourish like a delicate little flower made of pure steel.
Is this the artist we want to cultivate? The one who’s afraid to step out and create, for fear of inadequacy? How do you expect anyone to be even remotely vulnerable in the art they pursue when vulnerability inherently requires the safety to make mistakes? When it requires teachers that will meet you in your weakness and encourage the small sprouts they see?
Art can do great things when executed well—it can move people and effect change and bring recognition. But no matter how lofty your dreams for your art may be, the first priority cannot be the art itself. It must be the people involved. If you are an award-winning director or professor or choreographer and you’re lauded for your brave and innovative methods and the stellar pieces you produce, but you scream at your subjects or make the areas where they need to grow sound like a moral failing? I’m sorry that you’ve been misled, but that actually makes you bad at your job.
I hope that things will change soon, but it requires changing the way we approach learning art. It takes looking at a beginner drawing student and saying, Great job on the strong lines, here’s some tips to make the hands more proportionate. It takes looking at a master’s theatre student and saying, I appreciate the work you put into the emotion here, but what might happen if we drew that emotion from a new source?
These things are so easy to say, but they require treating students as humans allowed to learn. They require treating ourselves with compassion. Maybe one day, that will be valued as much as the finished product.
Hannah McNulty graduated from Calvin in 2021 and stuck around Grand Rapids, against all odds. She has spent her last few years singing in choir, teaching herself to love reading again, and trying to learn every fiber art simultaneously. She currently works at Eerdmans Publishing, where you can find her burying her nose in old paperwork and forcing anyone within earshot to listen to her bad puns.
