Find your ????

Well, I am shocked, I have to say. I gave feedback about Louise Fletcher's recent Find Your Joy course. And I found the response totally unprofessional. Basically, it was don't bother giving feedback, because she doesn't listen to feedback. And also, it's not her, it's me!! Wow! I think my primary school teachers had more respect for their students! And also, I think that's the first time I've been told I'm blunt!

Here is what I wrote:

Hello,

I have done a lot of work during Find Your Joy, and I have discovered elements of my art practice that I want to explore further. However, I want to give you some feedback about how I felt, during the last few weeks in particular. From week 7, I got quite frustrated with the course. I felt that the course wasn't building up week on week. To quote your analogy about learning how to drive, it felt like one week I was learning how to use the clutch, the next the accelerator, then the indicator. I didn't feel like like I was putting all the skills together. When I raised this in a comment, the answer was that everything would come together in Week 12, where you basically told us to do whatever we wanted!! From week 7, I felt quite disconnected. Interestingly, that's around the time that you started thinking about Momentum. Maybe I sensed your own disconnect from FYJ?

I am experienced, I paint in watercolour and mostly representationally, and I feel this was not the right course for me. 

It may be the right course for thousands of others, but also, I do better in small groups rather than feeling like I am just a number among a thousand others. I did try to engage in the Facebook group, but made no meaningful connections. Again, probably more about who I am. Some weeks, there was lovely conversations, others felt empty.

Yet, there is something, a spark I see in the abstract and representational pieces I painted that I want to explore further. But I will be exploring this on my own.

A few suggestions:

• Two separate courses, for beginners and for more experienced artists. Or start a section for beginners earlier, then merge with more experienced artists.
• Someone to teach a module on watercolours, someone who loves watercolour for what it does best.
• Smaller groups
• Move more of the demos towards the start of the week. Often they clarified things a lot, and you could have saved yourself lots of questions.
• Build week on week, guiding us to incorporate what we have learned into each new module

Thank you for taking the time to read my email.

Kind regards

Here is the reply I received: 

Gosh, I am far from disconnected from FYJ. It's the most important thing I do.

If I can be equally blunt, I think that disconnect was in you, not me. Week 7 is when we started to get into specific principles and often that causes a seize-up for some people. it would be inteerstting to investigate why that happened for you.

I thank you for your suggestions, but I have found I can only ever do things my way - any attempts to change for other people just lead to disaster. (Same as in painting!)

There's no need at all to explain your decision - it's important that Momentum is only for people who really feel excited about it.

I would recommend diving back into the course from week 7 and getting over this block that came up. It's such valuable content!

Louise x