Jello, Cement, and Mindsets
I have a handwritten sign on my studio wall reminding me that, “It takes paint to make a painting!” I tacked it up well over a year ago in an effort to overcome my paint skimping tendencies. My default is to squeeze out and mix small dollops of paint and then run my brush through these dollops over and over again as if I can extract more pigment by the sheer force of my brush and my will. Despite the many tubes of paint stashed in my studio and the art supply store down the street, I behave as if there is a scarcity of paint.
As artists, we are warned of the perils of a scarcity mindset. Believing that the things we need to succeed in our art practice are in limited supply – whether those things are collectors, accolades, followers, or paint – can limit our creativity and blind us to opportunity. An abundance mindset, on the other hand, can free up mental energy, allow our creative juices to flow more freely, open up collaborative opportunities, and make the art world an altogether better place. I would settle for a thicker and more vibrant coat of paint.
I have been trying to adopt an abundance mindset. I have at least been trying to behave as if I have an abundance mindset. And yet despite my best intentions, I continue to skimp.
Why is change so hard?
Like Jello and cement, once our minds are set they are hard to change
The operative word in mindset is “set.” We’re not talking about flights of fancy, isolated ideas, or transient attitudes. We are talking about the deeply embedded often unconscious beliefs through which we interpret the world and from which much of our behavior stems.
Mindsets are a distillation of input we’ve received from our environment over our lifetime – everything we’ve learned from the family and culture into which we are born, the experiences we have, the company we keep, and the places we live. Once formed, our mindsets can be extraordinarily useful. They help us to interpret new situations, make predictions, and decide what to do.
I grew up as an avid art maker with small-town babysitter pocket money. I bought pompoms and pipe cleaners individually at Fonks, the local five and dime. I scavenged and horded all kinds of found objects and fabric scraps that might come in handy. I made my paint last. My “art supply scarcity” mindset helped me get the most out of my money and my supplies.
But mindsets that served us well in the past, or that were logical extensions of our particular culture or environment, can become outdated and end up doing more harm than good.
Someone who grew up being told they are smart (or not) and praised for their achievements (or not) may logically view their personal characteristics as something they have rather than something they develop. Yet numerous studies by Carol Dweck and others have shown that people who view ability through this “fixed mindset” are less likely to take on challenges and achieve their goals than are people with a “growth mindset” – those who view abilities like muscles that can be strengthened with effort.
Unhelpful mindsets can affect not just our behavior but our physical health. Researchers at Yale and Miami University have found that people with negative mindsets about aging live an average of seven and a half years less that their more optimistic counterparts. This difference was not related to their overall health, age, or gender.
I long ago reached a point in my life where I can afford to apply my paint more generously. And yet even though I rationally know that my paint scarcity mindset is limiting my creative output, it still drives my behavior.
What is an artist to do?
Change doesn’t always come from within
According to much of the popular advice out there, the cure for a scarcity mindset, or a fixed mindset, or an aging-is-all-downhill mindset is to simply adopt a more helpful mindset. One article I recently read encouraged artists to “choose an abundance mindset” and “train your mind to focus on abundance over scarcity.” I suspect that these vague strategies would be less effective than even the sign in my studio.
Mindsets mostly operate behind the scene. This means that although we might be able to spend mental effort consciously examining and shifting our mindset in a given moment, the old mindset is likely to return as soon as we stop paying attention.
I remember participating in a graduate seminar where we discussed a wide range of ideas related to the brain, the environment, and our behavior. At one point, we were talking about a book on practicing gratitude. One seminar member described how she had spent a week following the book’s advice and had noticed many good outcomes including a better state of mind and more positive interactions with others. “What happened after the week?” our professor asked. “Oh,” she said, “I went back to my old ways. It was just so hard to maintain.”
Change your environment and change your mind
What’s the alternative to trying to think ourselves into a new mindset? Mindsets generally develop organically through the many interactions between ourselves and our environments. It follows that if we want to change our mindsets, we should look not only inside ourselves but also outside ourselves. Indeed, the most profound changes in our perspectives often come not through our own mental effort, but by having our eyes opened by new experiences, new conversations, and new places.
This is what researchers looking for ways to encourage a growth mindset in students have found. Although some teachers have tried to change students’ mindsets by simply giving a lecture or putting up encouraging posters on growth mindset, this turns out to be about as effective as my sign. Real change requires shifting the classroom environment so that it supports a growth mindset – for instance by modifying how the teacher interacts with the students on a day-to-day basis.
When we look to the environment for support, rather than limiting ourselves to a “change come from within” perspective, it opens up opportunities. We can take some of the burden off our overloaded and sometimes unreliable brains. We can change our physical environment. We can change who we spend time with. We can change our input – what we read and what we watch. We can collaborate with professionals to help us identify unhealthy mindsets and map out a strategy for change.
What does this have to do with paint?
A mini experiment in changing my mindset
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been taking my own advice. Instead of trying to think myself into using paint more generously, I have made small changes to my studio environment. Following the advice of an artist who does not hold back on paint, I switched out my small palette for a table-sized palette and started using chunky paintbrushes instead of my usual smaller ones.
I gave myself the literal tools to change my scarcity mindset. The large palette demanded large puddles of paint. The big brushes demanded that I pick up big gobs of paint. Giving into these demands was surprisingly hard but the paint police didn’t come for me. That made it easier to do the next day. And the day after that.
The micro-environment of abundance that I have created is slowly shifting my perceptions and my behavior. It is starting to feel normal rather than wasteful to use more paint. I am painting more freely.
With all the things happening in your world, paint might seem pretty trivial. But mindsets are anything but. Our mindsets shape how we relate to the world and each other and changing those relationships often starts with changing minds. As Albert Einstein said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
We might not be able to instantly transform mindsets, but we can work to change the environments that feed some of those mindsets.
Can you identify a mindset, big or small, that doesn’t support who you want to be or how you want to act? Could changing some aspect of your environment help shift that mindset to something more supportive?
Anne Kearney is the 2025 reDirect Artist in Residence. You can read more about her here.