Farley Lewis

A bold stroke is borne of risk and joy, and confidence that we have the freedom to make mistakes.

I find that most artists want to be bolder and looser in their art, and they often look for the right technique. But bold brushstrokes are 10% technique and 90% courage. Timidity is fear in diapers, and it produces tame, insecure-looking art. Like fear, timidity is not your friend. For better or worse, who we are – fearful or courageous – will always be woven into our art.

Bold means we’re okay with failure if that’s what the effort brings, but we don’t expect that.

Bold is carefree but not careless. A bold brushstroke of paint can be thought out ahead of time. My goal is the look of spontaneity, not doing it spontaneously. I usually think through a bold stroke before I make it. Bold is not reckless or unplanned. A building with bold architecture is not unplanned or spontaneously thrown together, just conceived while thinking outside the box. It’s easier to tame a wild brushstroke – or idea – than to enliven a timid one.

When I quit my day job to go fulltime as a fine artist, it felt reckless. I had a wife, a house payment, and an expensive habit I’ve never been able to break – eating. I tried the 30-day diet and lost a month. But I digress. The leap into the art world was not a decision I made on the fly, I had been contemplating the leap for several years. I had a plan. Not a very good one, honestly, but it gave me the courage to jump.

Bold brushwork is the look of fearless joy. There is risk and guesswork involved. Think it through, make a plan, then take the bold move. Bold walks between the two ditches of hurried carelessness and the paralysis of analysis. 

I find that bold brushstrokes – like most bold moves in life – often require mercy. I tell artists that even if you seriously question the bold stroke you just made, give it time. Let it linger on the canvas. Don’t let fear talk you out of it too quickly. Fear is often concerned with what others will think. If your life or painting process has been infiltrated with fear and timidity, and you suddenly find the courage to do a bold stroke, that one fearless brushstroke looks like a brightly colored parrot sitting on a wire full of starlings. (For those unfamiliar with starlings, they are the generic version of a black bird.) So you stand back, unnerved by how out of place the bold stroke is, and you shoot that parrot dead.

I remember that out-of-place feeling I had when I finally found the courage to buy a gym membership, and stepped into the gym full of muscle-bound guys. I thought, “They know I’m a poser.” As I eyed the pick dumbbell to start my work-out, I noticed they were lifting weights that normal people pick up with a fork lift. I almost got a hernia just watching. Taking a bold step and feeling out of place is not a sign that you’re in the wrong place, it’s just a sign that you’re in a new place. A place of risk-taking that may be fraught with peril, but it’s the only way to make your dreams come true, and to become the person you’ve always wanted to be. After a few months at the gym, I found out that those huge guys were actually not judging me at all, as I had supposed. They were cheering for me.

What if that one bold stroke, that one courageous step was a doorway to a new normal? What if you decided that your painting, your production was not the treasure, but the real treasure was the growing freedom in your heart? A new lifestyle of courage?

The only way to avoid failure is to avoid taking risks. Then you have the ugly task of learning to live with mediocrity and lifeless boredom. I believe each of us is hardwired to live a life of risk-taking; anything less is beneath who you were designed to be.

Make a bold stroke. The world is waiting for you.