Expectations vs (Sur)Reality

It’s a meme now. We do something because we expect a certain result and when we don’t get that result, we’re disappointed. This, I think, is a consequence of a goal-oriented culture. I’ve read all the biz-lit books and they all say “set a goal, work toward the goal, and above all, avoid distractions, because otherwise you’ll never accomplish anything big and then you’ll have nothing to brag about at dinner parties.”  And it’s true that most really big accomplishments don’t just happen by accident. They take sustained effort in a specific direction. If you’re trying to build a pyramid, you have to pile all the stones in the same place. Otherwise, you won’t have a pyramid. You’ll have a minefield of toe-stubbing hazards instead. Thus, life. The endless pursuit of trying to get out of your own way long enough to get something done. 

But when we focus too much on our expectations, we’re defining success based on our powers of prediction. Makes sense if you’re talking about investing in the stock market, less so if you’re talking about a day at the park. You don’t evaluate a park trip based on whether or not it went the way you thought it would go. You had some hopes when you left the house, probably amounting to “I hope the weather does what I think it’s going to do and have prepared for” but the truth is when it comes to days in the park, “Did you have fun” is the only question that matters. Forgot the football, but jumped in a mud puddle instead? Successful day at the park. Pickleball courts were full, so you wandered around, discovered a new hiking trail, and saw an osprey? Successful day at the park.  

Reality does not exist to conform to our expectations. That is, in fact, one of its greatest strengths. No matter what you think is going to happen, what actually happens will be different. Deeper. It will have layers. Reality is weird. Reality is bigger than your brain. It’s got more to it. More complexity and more possibility. (Your brain knows this, which is why your dreams get so weird.) It will surprise you. And if you let it, it will delight you. And if you’re so focused on your expectations that you ignore the weirdness, well my friend, you are missing out. 

We talked about plein air last month, so let’s examine the expectation of the plein air experience: 

1. I will go outside with my paints.

3. I will find a picturesque stream/river/beach/pond/tree/barn. It will have good light and a convenient place to set up an easel.

4. The weather will be perfect.

5. There will be no wind.

6. There will be no bugs.

7. I will sit still for four hours.

8. Physically content and mentally serene, I will become a vessel, a conduit from light to paint.

9. I will return home with a painting that is the emotional and spiritual embodiment of the time and place I was at.

10. Someone-or many someones - will desperately want to give me money for this painting. A lot of money. 

This expectation comes from a lot of places, starting with the fact that most plein air paintings that the public gets to see tend to be of beautiful places in sunny weather. Often, there are barns. Or boats, sometimes if there’s a harbor nearby. Barns, and trees, and mountains tend to stay still, which is why they crop up so much in paintings. It’s just fundamentally easier to paint something that’s not moving all the time. It’s hard to paint when your subject matter runs away, which is why you don’t see many paintings of cheetahs done from life. Or dog parks. 

I was painting in Park City, Utah earlier this month. Everyone is athletic and rich, and they all look it. They're in shorts while there's still snow on the mountains, cheerfully and vibrantly cultivating tans. Park City is nestled in the Rocky Mountains, and when I was there, the peaks were covered in snow while the weather was 70 degrees. The streams around town were cheerful, bubbly rivulets of current. And you’d expect -- I expected -- that I’d end up with some beautiful paintings of the mountains, and the creeks and the idyllic scenery in which I was immersed. The “painter’s life” expectation I laid out above crops up here.  

I try not to get too self-conscious about my image but occasionally the insecurities pile up, usually right after someone finds out I’m an artist and we have a conversation like this: 

Them: Oh neat! What do you paint?

Me: Sci-fi and fantasy narrative oil paintings.

Them: Oh, so elves and dragons.

Me: Well.... uh... monsters, actually. Based on the weeds in my garden.

Them: <polite incomprehension> 

Professional conversations get strange in a hurry because most adults, it turns out, never have to consider how to make a root ball scary and cute and not really threatening and give it a personality all at the same time. It’s just not a problem most people have. For that matter, most of my local artist circle don’t have this problem either. There’s a specific brand of loneliness that comes from being the only person I know that has the problems I’ve got and it’s most noticeable when I’m struggling with some absurd artistic challenge purely of my own making that I can’t even complain about because what comes out of my mouth sounds nuts, even to me.  

For example, I have an open studio event coming up. And for this show, I am making Desk Pets. So if you come to my studio, you’ll see, in addition to a few new paintings I haven’t shown, a collection of Things In Jars. With eyes. And frankly, I’m pretty proud of them. But as you marvel at the subtle artistry of a cartoonishly miffed potato, spare a thought for my long-suffering husband. The kitchen table has been covered in “prototypical desk pets” (potatoes in jars) for weeks. There are eyes scattered all over. I’ve declaimed intensely and at length about Why Googly Eyes Just Aren’t Good Enough (too easily dismissed by the viewer, not expressive). There was the research into adhesives to attach the glass eyes to the wire backs (what’s submersible and will stick to absolutely everything? Automotive silicone gasket masker, that’s what). Once I decided that I needed movable arms instead of toothpicks, I had to design the bases, and then I had to build the bases and that took three different power tools and a grim willingness to use them all incorrectly (apologies to the fine folks at Milwaukee who designed a perfectly serviceable orbital sander). Sensible people would have used the right tools for the job (a belt sander in this case. And a much bigger vice. And probably a table saw).  

More sensible people would have strategically pursued a lucrative career behind a desk and by doing so, avoided this entire situation. But life is about overcoming the challenges you’ve actually got with the tools available to you, and I do take a certain sick glee in assuming that I’m the only one who has had this problem. It’s all mine. 

I can only imagine what it’s like to be on the receiving end of all this. 

I do not, you understand, let my hangups about my own weirdness stop me. After all, this is my job. I am professionally weird now. This is what I signed up for when I took the gig. So, back in Park City, in the name of professionalism, I took iron supplements, rented an e-bike to handle the worst of the hills, and did some frankly great painting. But one of the prices of being an illustrator, for me, is being perennially the weird kid in the corner at parties. The payoff is huge, but every so often I just wish I could find an easier way to handle the social aspect of things. I don't know if being a perennial outsider is necessary to make art, or if I just haven't found the other weird-kid-artists trying to make dandelions look angry.  

The reality of plein air is, as you probably expect, not like the fantasy I laid out above. For starters, I get surprisingly cold if I’m sitting still outside. Sixty degrees hiking up a mountain is much different than sixty degrees perched on a collapsible fishing stool for three hours at a stretch. So instead of shorts and a cute tank top, I had on wool leggings, pants, a shirt, a flannel shirt over that, and a jacket on top of everything. Layers are key in plein air. And on top of everything else, Park City is at about 6,900 feet of elevation, which puts it 6,880 feet higher than where I normally live. At that altitude, you get about three steps up the first staircase and find that someone has stolen all the oxygen. Bundled up in three layers and huddled over my sketch book with my thermos full of coffee, I was doing a credible impression of a heap of wheezing, asthmatic bag pipes. Formless, immobile, and occasionally emitting strange and tortured noises, I soldiered on. 

And that’s before we even get to what I was painting. It wasn’t mountains and it wasn’t picturesque little streams full of ducks. No no. I stumbled on some sculptures of fish made out of old, rusty car parts. I was painting those. 

Park City car part fish.

And sure, I could let myself be disappointed about not painting mountains. But no one sets out to paint fish made out of car parts. No one. That’s not a goal you even consider when you’re prepping your plein air kit if you don’t already know the fish exist. You don’t fantasize about it because you don’t even know it’s an option.  

Reality is weird and delightful and wonderful if you pay attention.  

Not at all coincidentally, that’s the theme of my next show. Expectations VS (Sur)Reality. I have a garden. I have expectations about how gardening is going to go and what it will yield. I am consistently wrong. And rather than harp too much on this, I’m reveling in the weirdness of the real.  

And then I’m making it weirder, making up stories to explain what I find. Instead of focusing on what reality isn’t, I explore what it is and what it could be. I made up the aliens because it was funny. Because it was weird. Because it kept my mind occupied when I was digging up weeds. Because it got me invested in my garden more than I would have been otherwise and now I go back garden more  to see what happens next.  

We don’t know enough to expect good stories. We expect outcomes, not stories. Giving myself a story to invent, one that I advance by gardening, gets the gardening... well, not done, but more done than it would be otherwise. And because I am gardening in pursuit of a narrative rather than gardening to keep up with the people down the block, my garden is different than it would be otherwise. Any sensible person would dig out all the weeds and start from scratch. Any sensible person would never have let the blackberries take over half the plot. But I’m not sensible when it comes to my garden so instead I plant whatever catches my eye at the plant nursery and stand back and wait to see what lives. And because the blackberries have established themselves, I have a slice of homemade blackberry galette to enjoy while I observe the slow-moving thunderdome I’ve built, and I have an army of crows to keep me company while I do it. As long as they get some of the blackberries, they don’t complain too much. 

Come to Expectations VS (Sur)Reality at Chapman St Studios June 7-8, 11am-5pm and see where following the unexpected, the weird, will take you.

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