Ruining and rebuilding: What Brenda Beerhorst’s artmaking process can teach us about life

The artist, recently gaining representation at LaFontsee Galleries, knows that her paintings being ruined is just part of the process.

Brenda Beerhorst is committed to letting go.

“I’ll ruin it, and then bring it back many times,” she says of her process of layering in her nonobjective paintings.

Layered sometimes as much as 70 times, she then sands her work (yes, with a power sander) in between to reveal those layers. The paint on board develops a history all its own. Her paintings become rich with the willingness to take risks, to try, to not be afraid to remove progress, to fail. Beerhorst lets the work be “ruined,” then returns to add another layer, trusting the steps to know she can always keep working.

I can’t help but think how Beerhorst’s brave approach to making art has much to teach me about how we make a life.

Until recent years, Beerhorst was more focused more on parenting and educating her six children, leaving little time for fostering her own art practice. She’s returned to her artist roots more intently as the kids got older. She’s taken over her attic for her studio, as she continues to expand her focus on her art career. Recently taken on at LaFontsee Galleries, I’m interested to see where that attention and focus will take her, to see how her work continues to develop. One thing’s for sure: her willingness to explore and trust that “ruining it” isn’t the end of the story will serve her well.

Up in that attic, stacks of work in progress, she has made her peace with loss and let go—knowing that the beauty of artmaking is found in the rebuilding.

I would posit there are two kinds of artists—two kinds of creators—in this world. Though there are always grays, and I’m no fan of the either/or approach to life, there are, at least, distinct approaches to making work, though artists’ approaches may shift between the two from day to day. But for the sake of studying ways of approaching creation, we’ll use two boxes.

There are the self-proclaimed “tortured artists.” These are the writers who agonize over every word, trying to get it right as they go along; the ones who brag about how they wouldn’t recommend being a writer to anyone as it’s nothing but struggle. They are the painters who tightly control every stroke, precision even in their meticulous repairs, seeking perfection.

The others are the ones who play. They have gloriously let go. They are the writers who know that they’ll slash full pages, move page 34 to page 2, completely recreate the last section, find the right word by first throwing down all the wrong ones to get to it. No matter, they’ll just delete the unnecessary words later.

They’re the painters that leave remnants of all the work it took to get to a finished piece, the ones who proclaim success when one little square inch up in the corner works exactly as they had in their minds, the ones with a buildup of layers, like Beerhorst’s, showing us the path to a finished creation.

Tortured artists are seeking perfection and expecting nothing less; constantly let down and seeing failure; stiffened by fear. They do get there often—that tight precision can create beautiful, breathtaking work. But it seems a joy is lost in holding so tightly to the idea that artists must be tortured, must struggle.

The others, though, are able to hold onto the joy of being willing to ruin their work, to make mistakes, to do it badly—knowing that every mis-step teaches us more, that every mistake is not the end of the story, that all the layers and mis-steps can also build up a beautiful work of art.

Beerhorst, as I’m sure you’ve deciphered, falls into the second category: those who play. What could be misconstrued as a vulnerability in this willingness to ruin things is instead a strength. It takes a certain matter-of-fact honesty about reality to recognize that to get the richness of layers you have to be willing to not allow it to get so precious that you get scared of ruining it.

You will ruin things. Things fall apart, all on their own or by your own hand. The job of the creator, after all, is not just to make things—but to problem solve, to figure out how to put them back together.

Beerhorst’s work reminds me of this truth. The paintings are just shapes and colors, really. But something about those layers tells a story. The works in progress are roughed up, no gentle handling here, and they’ve had their moments, Beerhorst will tell you, of being utterly destroyed.

But in the end—and if you ask me, along the way, too—the work reveals a beauty and strength that, at its best bits and moments, is luminous.