Stop Running from Your Creative Reality - and Start Owning It
One day, not too long ago, I walked into the clay studio and found myself staring at a bag of porcelain clay I'd been avoiding. Not because I didn't like it, but because I kept thinking about those amazing deep teals and metallic sheen achieved with deep brown/black clay used by an artist I've been admiring. Dark clay creates such moody, atmospheric effects. And then my mind travels to stoneware that lets you build bigger, more architectural forms. Or the speckled clay that looks so cool with certain glaze combinations. Maybe I should buy a bag of each, and see what I can do with them…
But then I remembered something my Dad, a psychologist, once told me about radical acceptance – this idea that real growth happens when we stop fighting our current reality and start working with it instead. So I sat down, opened that bag of porcelain, and committed to really learning what this temperamental, delicate clay could teach me.
That decision changed everything about how I approach both my art and my teaching. The magic doesn't happen when you have everything you want – it happens when you master what you already have.
Welcome to what I call the "building skill phase" of creativity – the radical acceptance approach to mastering your craft that might just upend how you think about limitations.
Resist? Or Accept?
Which will move us forward, and which will keep us stuck?
The Problem: Why We Stay Stuck in "If Only" Mode
Here's what I see happening wherever I go, and not just with artists: We get stuck in a perpetual state of "if only." If only I had a bigger space, different materials, more time, better lighting... then I'd create the work I'm meant to make.
This constant mental shopping for better circumstances isn't just about materials – it's about avoiding the deep, sometimes boring work of building mastery within our actual situation. When we're always planning our next pivot, we're unconsciously giving ourselves permission to stay surface-level with what we're currently doing.
Psychology calls this Resistance. When we resist what IS, it's absolutely exhausting. Instead of channeling our creative energy into skill-building, we're spending it on mental escape plans. Or just complaining, venting, and fuming. None of that is helpful!
The Solution: Radical Acceptance Meets Skill Building
This is where radical acceptance becomes a game-changer for artists. Instead of constantly fighting against your current materials, time constraints, or studio limitations, what if you fully accepted them and got curious about what's possible within those boundaries?
Let me tell you about my relationship with porcelain clay – and how this shift in mindset transformed my entire practice.
This material is temperamental, delicate, and honestly kind of a pain sometimes. It collapses if you look at it wrong, and it definitely doesn't create those gorgeous, moody glaze reactions I see other artists getting with dark clays in the gas kiln.
But instead of constantly wishing I was working with something else, or buying and trying every clay body under the sun, I made a radical acceptance decision: I would fully commit to understanding porcelain's unique personality and building my skills within its specific constraints.
Here's what happened when I stopped fighting my material and started leaning into it: I got comfortable with the way that porcelain excels at delicate forms, translucency, fine carved details, and showcasing vibrant underglaze work. My line drawings come alive on its smooth surface in ways they never could on rough stoneware. The constraints that initially frustrated me – its delicate nature, its need for careful handling – became the very qualities that pushed my technical skills to a new level. Having to be so precise with throwing this tricky material has made me a better teacher, as I have really dissected each step and become better at troubleshooting common throwing challenges.
More importantly, by committing to mastery within these constraints, I developed a signature style and approach that's distinctly mine. The skills I built through wrestling with porcelain's challenges opened doors I never expected – most notably leaning into the surface design style that was right under my nose the whole time, drawing on the surface of my pieces with a glaze pencil. It was so "me" I didn't even think of it at first, since I was too busy looking around at what others were doing.
It's like when I used to bring photos of gorgeous, thick wavy hair to my hairdresser and ask for that exact style. He'd look at me and say, "Um, your hair doesn't DO that." Your materials have personalities too – and fighting against them is exhausting, and basically just fruitless.
The Radical Acceptance Approach to Creative Growth
When you practice radical acceptance with your current creative situation – whether it's your materials, your schedule, your skill level, or your workspace – something profound happens:
You build deep, transferable skills. Instead of being okay at many different approaches, you develop genuine expertise. These deep skills become the foundation for everything else – and they're what create unexpected opportunities down the line.
Your authentic voice emerges. When you're not constantly trying to copy what everyone else is doing, your unique perspective has space to develop. NO one else has your life, your hands, your experiences. Work unapologetically from that place, and the lightbulb will switch on!
You stop wasting energy on resistance. All that mental bandwidth you were spending on "what if" and "if only" gets redirected into actual skill development and creative problem-solving.
Clarity replaces overwhelm. Instead of being paralyzed by infinite possibilities, you know exactly what to work on next. This clarity is incredibly energizing for creative action.
If it’s only in your imagination -
then there is no clear next step, and you remain stuck in dreaming and wishing mode.
Radical Acceptance Beyond the Studio
This approach isn't limited to art materials – it's a powerful way to work with any constraint in your creative life.
Living in Pennsylvania instead of that dream artist town on an island? Rather than spending energy resenting your location, radically accept it and get curious: What can you create here that you couldn't create anywhere else? Maybe you develop an intimate knowledge of local flora for your botanical illustrations. Maybe the industrial landscape becomes the backdrop for your photography series. Maybe you connect with a community of makers you never would have found otherwise. Maybe you realize you have an epic art center right around the corner from your house!
Recently retired and feeling like you're "starting too late"? Instead of comparing yourself to artists who've been at it for decades, accept where you are and ask: What perspective do you bring that younger artists don't have? What life experiences inform your work in unique ways? What does your current schedule allow that working artists can't access?
The goal isn't to pretend constraints don't exist or that they don't sometimes suck. It's to stop spending creative energy fighting them and start using that energy to build something meaningful within them.
Your Radical Acceptance Action Plan
Ready to stop fighting your creative reality and start building mastery within it? Here's how to put this into practice:
Step 1: Name Your Current Reality What's actually happening in your life right now? Don't list your goals or dreams here – just name what's actively taking up your mental and physical energy.
For creativity specifically: What medium are you currently working with? What's your actual available studio time? What's your real budget for supplies?
Step 2: Identify Your Big Three From everything you listed, circle the three main situations that take up the largest portion of your time and energy. These are your primary constraints to work within, not around.
Step 3: Inventory Your Resources For each of those three main situations, list everything you DO have available to work with. Focus on what's present, not what's missing.
Step 4: Choose Your Next Single Step For each situation, identify just the next step forward. Not the next ten steps, not the end goal – just the very next action you can take with the resources you listed.
Using my porcelain example: Instead of dreaming about some epic, complex creation I'm nowhere near ready for, my next step is simply throwing consistent shapes in the six forms I've chosen for my current collection. That means showing up, sitting at the wheel, and throwing. A lot. It gets boring sometimes, and definitely frustrating, but this is where mastery gets built – in the repetition, in the small improvements, in the gradual understanding of how this specific material responds to my hands.
And here's the beautiful part: Those breakthrough moments do come. Not every day, but often enough to remind you why this deep work matters.
Look around at where you are, and what you have.
Live fully from there, and keep growing!
The Beautiful Truth About Radical Acceptance
So help me out - join me in the paradigm shift of viewing constraints differently. Rather than limitations to overcome – they're the very structure that allows mastery to develop. Just like a river carves its unique path by working with the landscape it encounters, your creative voice will develop its unique character by working deeply within your actual circumstances.
This approach requires patience. There will be days when the work feels boring, when you wonder if you should be doing something else, when that grass-is-greener feeling tries to pull you away from your chosen path. But every time you choose to stay and go deeper, you're building something that can't be replicated by jumping from thing to thing.
The skills you develop, the insights you gain, the authentic voice that emerges – these become the foundation for opportunities you couldn't have imagined when you started. But they only come through the radical acceptance of working with what you have, right where you are.
What would change in your creative practice if you fully accepted your current situation and got curious about its possibilities? I'd love to hear how this approach shifts things for you – because I suspect you'll be amazed by what becomes possible when you stop running from reality and start owning it.
WIth Enthusiasm for Art & Life,