I want to make a point about perfectionism, maybe the way it is both a hindrance to creativity and progress, but also the way this hindrance can be used for the artist's own purposes. Talk about ways other people do it and maybe how I can implement these things in my own work.
The stance is that Perfectionism, while being an aliment of sorts, is also something that can be harnessed and not just suffered.
This point is relevant because there are many who suffer this issue, including me, an issue that can lead to depression and a serious lack of productivity which in turn is a great loss for the artist and their art progress as well as their progress as a person.
In three parts in first section there would be examples different practices which use or suffer from perfectionism in some way (it's links to spirituality, ties to stress and depression), in second section would be examples of the art that these practices produce and perhaps compare the (not the difficulty technical or otherwise, but maybe the influence that a state of mind has on the artwork = amount of stress?), in the third part I would put different strategies for dealing with perfectionism, that I've seen from various artists online and talk about implementing these strategies and perhaps also how spiritual practices (such as meditation) might further them.
For textual evidence I will use various texts from websites on spiritual practices, blog posts from suffering artists and creatives, research into various styles that require a certain form of perfectionism (pointillism, photorealism, sculpture), for visual i would pick images of finished works of perfectionist artists or those artists who work in certain styles (pointillism, photorealism) to show differences and similarities between works.
Now I'm stuck thinking how to do this with art, if I should go the more spiritual route and proclaim certain symbols in art, maybe I should compare mediums, if that even matters, I mean it was different when I was doing this for Mucha and Van Gogh, because it was more about technical aspects at first and I could elaborate on this. Perhaps here, if I'm all about perfectionism then i could try compare the time it took to make the works, length of preparations (grids for photoralism, drawings for mandala,…) or number of mock starts, croqui and thumbnails (photorealism, pointillism), practice (how much do you have to practice calligraphy for the 'perfect movement'), also compare the states of mind if possible (Buddhism has teachings on this, but I dunno if I can find anything for photorealism or pointillism, but I know I can find about preparations (at least a bit))
I suppose I'll start the first section by explaining certain practices and showing where they embrace, clash or use perfectionism as a support tool, but then I'll continue with art pieces and their preparation times and so on, before going to artist struggles and techniques for channeling this.
