Learning to Float: Trust Before Technique in the Studio

Artists at work at Crawford Supported Studios, Cork Ireland

When someone learns to swim, we don’t begin with the breaststroke or freestyle. We begin with floating. Floating is a lesson in trust - trusting the water to hold you, and trusting yourself enough to release the fear of sinking. Only once that balance is felt do the strokes matter.

The same is true when someone begins a studio practice. Too often the starting point is framed as an end point: a completed drawing, a recognizable product, a predetermined destination. That sets up a false standard of success and failure, as if the practice is only worthwhile if the goal is “hit.” 

But a studio practice is not about arriving - it’s about entering. Entering the unknown, wading into the water, experimenting until trust is built not just in the materials, but in oneself. Knowledge gained this way doesn’t just sit in the ears as instruction; it burrows deeper. It is carried in the hands that move, the eyes that notice, the body that feels.

As facilitators, our role is to create entry points that emphasize trust and possibility rather than product. One prompt I’ve used is: “Make the biggest drawing you’ve ever made.” With this, artists have taped together sheets of printer paper until they had a mural-sized surface. Others have made a drawing on one sheet, pinned it to a wall, then made a second drawing on the opposite wall and declared them part of the same piece - a room’s width apart, but connected.

The focus isn’t on articulation, skill, or technique. It’s on filling space, using materials, and realizing that a drawing can stretch as far as you decide it should. There’s no failing here, only making and framing.

This kind of beginning is the studio equivalent of learning to float. It gives artists a way to wade in, to experiment, and to trust themselves with the materials before “strokes” or refined techniques come into play. And it reminds us that a studio practice doesn’t begin at the finish line. It begins the moment one chooses to wade into the water and builds confidence.

Our first responsibility as facilitators is not to ensure completion, but to create the conditions where someone feels they can float - to help them discover that they can make, that they can experiment, and that in doing so they are already inhabiting their practice.