There are mornings when I walk into the studio and feel completely at ease. The light pours through the windows, the paints are waiting on the table, and I can't wait to pick up a brush. Those are wonderful days, but if I'm being honest, they aren't the days that have taught me the most.
The more memorable ones are quieter.
They're the mornings when I hesitate for a moment before I begin. I stand in front of the easel with a cup of coffee in one hand, looking at yesterday's painting, wondering if I know where it's headed. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. After all these years, I've learned that uncertainty isn't a sign that something is wrong. It's simply part of making art.
When I was younger, I imagined experienced artists eventually reached a place where they no longer questioned themselves. I thought confidence was something you earned through years of practice, as though one day it simply arrived and decided to stay.
It turns out that's not how it works.
If anything, experience has made me more aware of how many possibilities exist inside every painting. Every decision closes one door and opens another. Every layer changes the conversation. That's part of what makes painting so endlessly fascinating, but it's also why doubt has a way of sneaking into the room.
My inner critic still visits.
The difference now is that I recognize its voice, and I don't mistake it for the truth.
For a long time, I thought the goal was to silence that voice completely. I wanted to paint with absolute confidence, without questioning myself or second-guessing a decision. I don't chase that anymore. I've discovered that confidence isn't the absence of doubt. It's the willingness to continue even when doubt is sitting quietly beside you.
One habit has changed that relationship more than almost anything else.
I've stopped asking whether a painting is good.
It's such a heavy question, and it almost always arrives too early.
A painting that's only halfway finished isn't supposed to know what it wants to become. Judging it in that moment feels a little like reading the opening chapter of a novel and deciding whether the ending will be worthwhile. It hasn't had the chance to unfold yet.
Instead, I've learned to ask a gentler question.
What does this painting need?
Sometimes the answer is another layer of colour. Sometimes it needs more contrast, or a quieter passage where the eye can rest. Occasionally it needs nothing more than time. There are paintings that have spent weeks leaning against the studio wall before I've understood what they were asking for.
That small shift changes everything.
Instead of standing in judgment of the work, I become curious about it. Curiosity has always been a kinder companion than criticism.
I've noticed something else over the years.
Almost every painting I love has passed through an awkward stage.
There comes a moment when the colours feel disconnected, the composition seems uncertain, and I wonder if I've made a terrible mistake. Years ago, that was often the point where I would lose confidence. Now I smile when it happens because I've seen that stage so many times before. It's become familiar, almost reassuring.
The awkward stage isn't evidence that the painting is failing.
It's evidence that it's still becoming.
The same, I think, could be said for us.
Perhaps that's why I try not to compare my work too much while I'm in the middle of creating it.
It's wonderfully easy these days to scroll through beautiful paintings from artists all over the world. I admire so many of them. Their work inspires me, teaches me, and reminds me of the endless ways colour and composition can be explored.
But comparison has a way of making the studio feel crowded.
When I'm painting, I need the room to belong to the work in front of me. I need enough quiet to hear what this particular painting is asking for instead of wondering whether it measures up to someone else's.
There will always be artists whose work I admire. That's a gift. But admiration is very different from comparison.
One expands us.
The other asks us to become someone we're not.
The longer I paint, the more I realize that my only real responsibility is to be present with the painting in front of me. Not the next one. Not the last one. Certainly not someone else's. Just this one. Brushstroke by brushstroke. Colour by colour. Conversation by conversation.
Some days the work flows effortlessly. Other days it asks for patience. On those quieter afternoons, when nothing seems to be resolving as quickly as I'd hoped, I remind myself that making art has never really been about certainty.
It's about paying attention. Paying attention to colour. To balance. To rhythm. To that small feeling in your chest that says, "Not quite yet..." and then, eventually, "There it is."
I've come to trust those moments.
Not because they happen on every painting, but because they've taught me that uncertainty doesn't last forever. If I stay with the work long enough, if I keep listening instead of rushing toward an answer, the painting usually finds its way.
Maybe that's what quiets my inner critic more than anything else. Not proving it wrong. Not arguing with it. Simply giving my attention to something more interesting. The painting.
By the time I become absorbed in the movement of colour across the canvas, that familiar voice has faded into the background. It's still there, perhaps, but it's no longer leading the conversation.
The painting is.
And that's exactly as it should be.
A Note for Your Studio
If your inner critic arrives before you've even dipped your brush into the paint, let it pull up a chair.
You don't have to ask it to leave.
Just don't hand it the brush.
There is a quieter voice waiting for you in the studio, and you'll hear it much more clearly once you begin.