Painting Without Color

Enrique Martinez Celaya, world-renowned painter and physicist, decided to burn all his paintings in the late 80's. It was a significant pivot point in his career, post-apprenticeship and pre-success. He said he needed to build painting from the ground up. 

So he destroyed all his paintings, and began to paint differently. 

"I eliminated from my painting anything that anybody has ever said that I was good at. So if I was good at drawing, I took it out. If I was told I had facility with color, I took it out. And then I said, 'Well, if I give up all these things, what is painting, for me?'"


Most of us spend our lives chasing success so desperately that we never give ourselves the freedom to explore the meaning of our lives without it. Or rather, the meaning of success without the ease of using our patterns and strengths.

Maybe success is not phoning it in, staying in our lane, but honing our craft for the sake of the process itself. Maybe rejecting simplistic success ("you're good at that") frees us up for real success ("your work has meaning").

Whatever you are passionate about in life, don't do it just because you like it and it comes naturally. I mean, that's a great place to start, but it won't last so long.

I love to run for instance, and I can easily spend my time running the distances I'm good at, at the pace I like, in the races I feel like I can win. But when I am injured or not progressing in the same way I usually do, and my performance slips, what is running to me? Do I quit? Force it? Hate it? Or do I start from the basics and remember why I love running in the first place?

I'm in a season of life that calls for burning and building from the ground up. I don't want easy success anyway. I want the kind of life that pushes forward, against the constraints and the very real hardships, toward a success that rejects what our society usually calls success and finds something better. More beautiful; richer.

Enrique Martinez Celaya says, "A lot of the great things of paintings is the constraints, the limitations. I mean that’s what makes them a creative enterprise; it’s the constraints. A lot of people talk about art as freedom when, in fact, it is the constraints that allow the possibility of art to happen. And color constrained under the pressures of these relatively small dimensions is beauty under compression, which is always an exuberant form of beauty."

Let's constrain ourselves for the sake of beauty, a life that shines brighter because of compression and struggle. A success well-earned.

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