Catching up with Hallie Strock

Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

​Recently I’ve been working on learning to love something that I usually try to avoid at all costs: Failure. In most walks of life we understand that developing expertise takes time. We don’t decide to become a doctor and expect to be performing brain surgery two weeks later. But for some reason when it comes to our art, we expect to be making fabulous interesting work almost from the get go. I’ve had quite a bit of formal training in art, and if my results are disappointing, I tend to want to give up.

So, in order to make the art that I dream of, I’ve been trying to tap into the deeper parts of myself in order to express what’s inside. I know what makes a good painting technically, and I struggle with trying to achieve that every time. I’ve been giving myself more time and space to experiment and not always rush for results. I’ve been trying to approach things with more curiosity and humility.

My fear of failure has sometimes stopped me from taking chances. But once I’ve taken chances and failed in my art, I’ve learned that nothing really bad happens! The sky doesn’t fall down. I just made a painting that didn’t work…..but in doing so I learned a lot. I’m learning all sorts of things to NOT try again…. and maybe I am coming up with some ideas about what might work better. It’s hard. I keep failing. But I want to make amazing work and have fun doing it.I hope you enjoy what I and the other amazing artists at 4th Street Fine Art are doing.
​- Hallie Strock