My New Art Teacher's Advice: "F*** This Painting!"

My dear friend Sharon Flitterman-King has been nudging me for months to find a new art teacher. So finally I took her suggestion and enrolled in a class with her former art teacher, Kate Knapp, a Berkshire County artist who is one of the most prolific painters I have ever met.

Today was the first day of class, and I will admit to being a bit nervous. After about an hour of painting, I turned to her and said, "Kate, I am thinking too much."

She had rather refreshing advice and she didn't wait a minute to give it to me: "Just throw the paint on the canvas any which way it comes out. Don't worry about what you're doing. Just have a good time and be yourself and tell yourself, 'Fuck this painting!'"

I laughed. I've never had an art teacher (or any other teacher) say anything like that to me before. But maybe because she said that, I dove into the painting and enjoyed it so much.

Thanks to Kate, my fire for painting has been stoked up once again.

Here is the painting I did today in class:

Thank you for pushing me Sharon!