The Art of Starting Over
Oops…
It started, as most of my adventures do, with breakfast and coffee! As I wondered past the shops I noticed the St. Clair Art Association happened to be open, so naturally, I wandered in… because really, how could I not? I ended up chatting with the kindest group of ladies, and before I knew it, I was walking out the door with paperwork in hand, a heart full of excitement, and a challenge: six pieces to make. Six! I could practically feel my brain sparking with ideas.
I decided to take a bold leap, to combine photography and encaustic. My subject? Horses. They felt symbolic: freedom, movement, strength, everything I wanted to express. I started the piece with all the optimism in the world. The wax flowed beautifully, the image was setting perfectly… and then, in true Robyn fashion, I overthought everything.
It wasn’t perfect enough. The lines weren’t quite right, the texture wasn’t smooth enough, and that little voice in my head started whispering all the familiar nonsense about how it wasn’t good enough. So I kept working it, adjusting, fusing, smoothing, until my hand slipped.
And when I say slipped, I mean the scraper went straight through the middle. A clean, heart-stopping tear across the piece I had spent hours on. I just froze. I stared at it in disbelief, then did what any artist would do… I cried. Not for long, just about three minutes. Three good, cathartic minutes of tears.
Then, something inside me shifted. I started laughing. Because what else can you do? The damage was done, and somehow it felt freeing. I grabbed my tools, scraped the entire middle out, and began again, not out of defeat, but out of determination.
What came from that chaos was different. It wasn’t what I planned, but it was beautiful. It carried the story of what it had been through, the imperfections, the recovery, the rebirth.
That piece taught me more than any class or tutorial ever could: art isn’t about perfection. It’s about surrender. It’s about grace in the mess, patience in the process, and the courage to begin again, even when you’ve scraped everything down to nothing.
These past few years have felt a lot like that piece… grief, growth, and starting over again and again. I’ve learned to stop expecting perfection from myself and to find beauty in the cracks. Because, much like art, healing is layered… wax over wax, mistake over mistake…until one day, you look at what you’ve created and realize it’s you.
Imperfect. Resilient. Beautiful.
