when i was in art school i developed a shake in my hand and this was the straightest line i could draw
now in hindsight it was actually good for some things like mixing a can of paint or shaking a polaroid
but at the time this was really doomsday this was the destruction of my dream of becoming an artist
the shake developed out of
really a single mindedpursuit of pointillism just years of making tiny tiny dots
and eventually these dots went from
being perfectly round to looking more like tadpoles because of the shake
so to compensate i 'd hold the pen tighter and this progressively made the shake worse so i 'd hold the pen tighter still
and this became a vicious cycle that ended up causing so much pain and joint issues i had trouble holding anything
and then i left art completely
but after a few years i just couldn 't stay away from art and i decided to go to a neurologist about the shake and discovered i had permanent nerve damage
so i did i went home i grabbed a pencil and i just started letting my hand shake and shake i was making all these scribble pictures
and even though it wasn 't the kind of art that i was ultimatelypassionate about
i just had to find a different approach to making the art that i wanted
now i still enjoyed the fragmentation of pointillism seeing these little tiny dots come together to make this unified whole
so i began experimenting with other ways to fragment images where the shake wouldn 't affect the work like dipping my feet in paint and walking on a canvas
or in a three d structure consisting of two by fours creating a two d image
by burning it with a blowtorch
i discovered that if i worked on a larger scale and with bigger materials my hand really wouldn 't hurt
and after having gone from a single approach to art
i ended up having an approach to creativity that completely changed my artistic horizons
this was the first time i 'd encountered this idea that embracing a limitation could actually drive creativity
i felt like i could do so much more with the supplies i thought an artist was supposed to have
i actually didn 't even have a regular pair of scissors i was using these metal shears until i stole a pair from the office that i worked at
really try to create something just completely outside of the box
but i sat there for hours
and nothing came to mind
the same thing the next day and then the next
quickly slipping into a creative slump
and i was in a dark place for a long time unable to create
and it didn 't make any sense because i was finally able to support my art and yet i was creatively blank
but as i searched around in the darkness i realized i was actually paralyzed by all of the choices that i never had before
and it was then that i thought back to my jittery hands
embrace the shake
and i realized if i ever wanted my creativity back i had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box
what if i could only create with a dollar 's worth of supplies
it really became a moment of clarification for me that
we need to first be limited
in order to become limitless
i took this approach of thinking inside the box to my canvas and wondered what if instead of painting on a canvas i could only paint on my chest
so i painted thirty images one layer at a time one on top of another with each picture representing an influence in my life
or what if instead of painting with a brush i could only paint with karate chops
so for six days i lived in front of a webcam i slept on the floor and i ate takeout and i asked people to call me and share a story with me about a life changing moment
their stories became the art as i wrote them onto the revolving canvas
this destruction idea turned into a yearlong project that i called goodbye art where each and every piece of art had to be destroyed after its creation
in the beginning of goodbye art i focused on forced destruction like this image of jimi hendrix made with over seven thousand matches
like spitting out food
and even frozen wine
the last iteration of destruction was to try to produce something that didn 't actually exist in the first place so i organized candles on a table i lit them and then blew them out then repeated this process over and over with the same set of candles
then assembled the videos into the larger image
so the end image was never visible as a physical whole
it was destroyed before it ever existed
in the course of this goodbye art series i created twenty three different pieces with nothing left to physically display
what i thought would be the ultimate limitation
actually turned out to be the ultimate liberation
as each time i created the destruction brought me back to a neutral place where i felt refreshed and ready to start the next project
it did not happen overnight there were times when my projects failed to get off the ground or even worse after spending tons of time on them the end image was kind of embarrassing
but having committed to the process i continued on and something really surprising came out of this as i destroyed each project
i was learning to let go
let go of outcomes
let go of failures and let go of imperfections
and in return i found a process of creating art that 's perpetual
i found myself in a state of constantcreation thinking only of what 's next
and coming up with more ideas than ever
when i think back to my three years away from art
away from my dream just going through the motions
instead of trying to find a different way to continue that dream
i just quit i gave up
and what if i didn 't embrace the shake
because embracing the shake for me wasn 't just about art and having art skills it turned out to be about life
and having life skills
learning to be creative within the confines of our limitations
is the best hope we have to transform ourselves
and collectively transform our world
looking at limitations as a source of creativity
now when i run into a barrier or i find myself creatively stumped
like using hundreds of real live worms to make an image
using a pushpin to tattoo a banana
or painting a picture with hamburger grease
limitations may be the most unlikely of places to harness creativity
rethink categories and challenge accepted norms
and instead of telling each other to seize the day
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