rules and reason

Rules are ok in making and in rug hooking as long as they are rules you make for yourself. As long as you know why you are following them. An art teacher in California in the nineteen seventies wrote my favourite rule on making which is, "There should be new rules next week."

I often find that beginners will sometimes have learned from a very rule based teacher. There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes beginners crave rules. It is helpful for them to stay in the margins and know what to do next. For some beginning with a lot of rules does not suit them. They are experiential learners who want to play with their materials. Rule based learning makes them uncomfortable. By now we all know there are different kind of learners.

I love the idea that there should be new rules next week because that means that we can grow in our craft. That we can push through and make new little pathways in our rug hooking brain. And that whatever pathway we are on, there are new branches that stem from that path. We are makers and we learn as we make. New colour combinations, new materials, new drawings, new designs, new patterns. We know that there is more where that last rule we made for ourself came from.

For me, I need to know the why of the rule. If someone explains to me it must be done a certain way I am often wondering about the reason for it. Then I need to decide does that reason matter to me? Is there another way that I can get the same results? Which way do I prefer?

I have all kinds of rules for myself in rug hooking and in life. I have routines I follow, colour combinations I love, things I don't eat, things I always eat. I have rules and rules and rules, but I have reasons for them all. They make no sense without a reason. As I change and grow the reasons change and so the rules change. Rules are made... yes you know this all to well....to be broken. Creatives do this all the time. We even break our own rules because we know all to well that in breaking them we grow.