Setting up
my art piece on the wall next to the other kids in the class was
humiliating. I am the harshest critic of
my own work so having to publicly display my work next to the other students in
my class, who I viewed as pure prodigies, was extremely difficult for me. Then, if having to visually critique my
comparison and lack of artistic skill wasn’t enough, the teacher then told us
that each of our paintings were going to be critiqued by other students in the
class, in front of the entire everyone. My
painting was up. I sat there blushing,
waiting to hear the awkward comments of people trying to find a nice way to say
my painting looked like a day care art project.
The first person raised their hand and I braced myself.
“I love
what you did with the color! The stark
contrast is very intriguing. I would
suggest focusing more on developing texture with the paint because you already
have the color down! Good job!”
I was
shocked. She liked it. It made me want to grab my piece and go work
on adding texture so she would like it even more. I was encouraged to adapt my piece, not
embarrassed.
Then
another person shot their hand up, “The abstract shapes are really
inviting. I like how you mixed rough
edges with smooth edges to lead your eye through the piece. It would look really cool if you faded the
color from dark purple to yellow on the shape in the middle because then it
would look like your piece was going from dark to light. It would make the flow of your piece even
smoother.”
Okay now I
was just surprised. I had never been
critiqued before so publicly yet felt so empowered. I was ready to take their suggestions and fix
my piece to be even better. I thought by
the end of this exercise I would be ready to throw my piece away and give up
art forever.
This first
experience changed the way I looked at critiques, both giving and receiving. I now don’t fear it and actually appreciate
the way people’s new perspective encourages me to make changes. My advice is to always be positive and always
give a helpful suggestion. Instead of saying, “This middle section made no
sense. You should reword it.” Say
something like this, “Your intro and conclusion were outstanding. The way you worded ‘this’ and ‘that’ really
captured my attention. If you changed a
few words in this middle section, it would flow with the intro and conclusion
much better. Maybe try changing ‘this
sentence’ to ‘this’. Great job so far!” Encouragement is the best way to elicit
change and improvement, not putting another person down. Likewise, look at criticism as encouragement to improve, not encouragement to give up.
(Picture quote of Malcolm X found on flickr. No criticism may lead to no success so don't be nervous of critics.)
