Unteachable?

It was one of those days that, in retrospect, is just a blur. I woke up this morning and got ready for class. I was a little late because I couldn't find these thirty percent off coupons for Utrecht that I use to buy one tube of Old Holland paint at a time. Unable to locate the bundle of fluorescent yellow coupons, I finally cut my losses and left for class, deciding that I just wouldn't go to Utrecht today. (I still can't find the Goddamned things and I've looked everywhere.)

Anyway, I got to class and just as I started to get into my painting,, of course, the teacher has to come and gather everyone up for the 10:15 class meeting (a.k.a. the most mind-numbing waste of my time imaginable.) Today we talked about the "presence" of a painting. Okay, I understand what she was getting at, but she had some students bring out their art as examples. She said, "I'm not anointing these, but..." (In journalism school, they teach you that when you say the word "but" it negates everything said before that word; I've paid attention and this rule holds true in just about every instance I've come across.) Anyhow, the paintings she used as examples... well, let's just say that they didn't exactly appeal to my personal aesthetic tastes and leave it at that.

Before that, though, Anne (the teacher) announced in front of everyone that she and I were going to the museum. I kind of cut her off, saying I didn't feel like going (I did have a wicked sinus headache, so I wasn't completely bullshitting her.) She replied with something like, "Well, we've been planning this for two weeks..." Blah, blah, blah. Make me look like a totally flaky asshole, why don't you? I asked her if we could discuss it later, in private because I didn't feel like sharing my health situation in front of the whole class.

So, after losing an hour of my time that I'll never get back to Anne's preambles and her digressing and quoting from an article that I thought she had meant to read, but never did, we were finally free. That was the good news. The bad news: it was noon and half of my day was down the drain. And I had yet to talk with Anne.

She came into my studio and I explained that I'd been feeling light-headed and nauseous because of sinus problems and, possibly, as a side effect of a new medication. She was okay with that. I, of course, had to, in the interest of full disclosure, tell her that I was concerned about going to the museum and having a painting that I am absolutely in love with be picked apart in front of me. Every painting that I've had to write a paper about, I never want to see that painting again once the paper's finished. I hate the over-analyzing that goes on around here. It's pseudo-intellectual masturbation and it's a complete waste of my studio time. Anne was dismayed at my concerns about over-analyzing a painting. She proceeded to tell me that she didn't feel like we'd had a very meaningful crit yet this semester and she felt like I held her at arm's length (which is true, actually.) She asked me what I wanted out of this class and I told her I just wanted time to do my work, that I didn't want to have paintings that had hardly even been "born" yet to be critiqued because anything someone says about them leaves me completely self-conscious from then on out. Anne proceeded to pull the guilt-trip, "You're paying a lot of money to go to school here" card. She informed me that I have a lot to learn. (Because, apparently, I didn't seem painfully aware enough of my shortcomings for her liking.) She continued to say, essentially, that I'm being stubborn and that I'm unwilling to learn; that I should reevaluate why I'm in school if all I want is private studio time. Finally, after totally insulting my intelligence and slighting my intellectual curiosity, Anne got up and left, telling me to think about what I wanted from her and that we'd talk more about it later. The minute I was sure that she was gone, tears streamed down my cheeks. I packed my things up and went back to my dorm so I could have a complete breakdown in private.

I'm so fucking tired of being picked on and told that I'm just some upstart who has promise but doesn't know what she's doing. It undermines everything that the teachers who I trust have told me to do; that is, that I have good instincts and that I should trust my intuition, that I should do what makes me happy. Am I really being stubborn by wanting to use my studio time to actually paint instead of go gallivanting around the museum and exposing myself to the myriad of social anxieties that accompany being out in public like that? Am I being unwilling to learn if I need time to articulate my painting before I allow people to go poke and prod it with a critique? I don't think I'm being unreasonable. What I think is happening is that my Asperger's has caused some sort of disconnect with the communication. There's something that I've assumed that she knows but doesn't, or something that she assumes I know but I haven't totally picked up on it because I'm socially retarded. (Literally.)

I was able to use my lunch hour to get my head in order and sort my thoughts out. The way I figured it was that we needed to "start over" in our interactions, but Anne never came back to speak with me today. I was kind of pissed, but it was just as well. I have so much shit going on in my head right now, trying to restructure the lines of communication with one of my three painting teachers. I've got papers to write and my own anxieties to fend off.