What do you think?
Rate this book
On Not Being Able to Paint
Milner’s great study, first published in 1950, discusses the nature of creativity and those forces which prevent its expression. In focusing on her own beginner’s efforts to draw and paint, she analyses not the mysterious and elusive ability of the genius but – as the title suggests – the all too common and distressing situation of ‘not being able’ to create. With a new introduction by Janet Sayers, this edition of On Not Being Able to Paint brings the text to the present generation of readers in the fields of psychoanalysis, education and all those, specialist and general audiences alike, with an interest or involvement in the creative process and those impulses impeding it in many fields.
274 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
46 people are currently reading
782 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 26, 2012
This was the third of Milner's books that I've read, and there were portions of it that I loved, but for the most part I didn't care for the writing style. She had at this point perhaps been working in industrial psychology so long that it seemed to me her writing style became too academic. (I've started reading her later book, Eternity's Sunrise and am delighted to find that as an older woman in her 80s, she dropped that academic style.) Aside from that, a significant portion of the text dwelt on what she personally got out of her free drawing, and much of that was, as another reviewer put it, her personal mythology. Which is fine, and of course it's the purpose we would do this kind of drawing and journaling to begin with. But I felt that it was too specific to her at times and took up a lot of space that slowed down the book for me.
However, there were some things that stood out for me a great deal. I penciled some passages, as I do, which is why no one would want my used books (smile).
In a later chapter, titled "Painting and Living," she began drawing conclusions, and at one point referred to something she'd experienced prior to writing the book. For me it stands out in particular:
"For years I had had to decide each week-end, should I shut myself away and paint or should I just live? It was perhaps less of a problem for the professional painter who could live in his spare time. But for the Sunday-painter it brought the need to balance up the various renunciations and gains. I had so often come away from a morning spent painting with a sense of futility, a sense of how much better it would have been to get on with something practical that really needed doing. And I had often felt, when out painting, both exalted and yet guilty, as if I were evading something that the people around me, all busy with their lives, were facing, that their material was real life and mine was dreams.... But was it?"
How often I've felt the same and asked myself the same question when I've spent free time in some creative endeavor that I couldn't do full time or wasn't sure I was any good at. For me I think the answer lies at least in part in living in a material driven society that values what makes one money over what makes one happy, that values "practicality" over dreams. Certainly we need balance, but when one works all week and still feels guilty or futile in taking some time for creative endeavors, something is certainly wrong?
Most frustrating for me is that the copy I read, a 1983 printing, was missing the most referred to drawing, which the author called "Angry Parrot." It was supposed to be the frontispiece, but there was none in my copy, and I couldn't find the drawing anywhere in the book. If it was titled differently and was there among the book's many figures, I wasn't able to translate it to the drawing she wrote about. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more without that repeated annoyance.
I recommend the book to anyone interested in free-drawing or visual journaling, who is willing to work a little at reading this book and applying the concepts to their own personal myth discovered through drawing. There are more accessible and up to date works in this area of interest, such as Visual Journaling by Barbara Ganim and Susan Fox, but Milner possesses a degree of integrity when viewing her own inner state that I find appeals to me, so I would recommend this one as well.
However, there were some things that stood out for me a great deal. I penciled some passages, as I do, which is why no one would want my used books (smile).
In a later chapter, titled "Painting and Living," she began drawing conclusions, and at one point referred to something she'd experienced prior to writing the book. For me it stands out in particular:
"For years I had had to decide each week-end, should I shut myself away and paint or should I just live? It was perhaps less of a problem for the professional painter who could live in his spare time. But for the Sunday-painter it brought the need to balance up the various renunciations and gains. I had so often come away from a morning spent painting with a sense of futility, a sense of how much better it would have been to get on with something practical that really needed doing. And I had often felt, when out painting, both exalted and yet guilty, as if I were evading something that the people around me, all busy with their lives, were facing, that their material was real life and mine was dreams.... But was it?"
How often I've felt the same and asked myself the same question when I've spent free time in some creative endeavor that I couldn't do full time or wasn't sure I was any good at. For me I think the answer lies at least in part in living in a material driven society that values what makes one money over what makes one happy, that values "practicality" over dreams. Certainly we need balance, but when one works all week and still feels guilty or futile in taking some time for creative endeavors, something is certainly wrong?
Most frustrating for me is that the copy I read, a 1983 printing, was missing the most referred to drawing, which the author called "Angry Parrot." It was supposed to be the frontispiece, but there was none in my copy, and I couldn't find the drawing anywhere in the book. If it was titled differently and was there among the book's many figures, I wasn't able to translate it to the drawing she wrote about. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more without that repeated annoyance.
I recommend the book to anyone interested in free-drawing or visual journaling, who is willing to work a little at reading this book and applying the concepts to their own personal myth discovered through drawing. There are more accessible and up to date works in this area of interest, such as Visual Journaling by Barbara Ganim and Susan Fox, but Milner possesses a degree of integrity when viewing her own inner state that I find appeals to me, so I would recommend this one as well.
April 21, 2010
a psychoanalyst studies drawing and painting, investigating the roots of the creative impulse and what exactly we are up to when we make a drawing. she can be a bit naive at times about the 'meaning' of art, and you also have to allow her to get lost from time to time in her own private mythologies, but on the whole this book is a fascinating "attempted embodiment of the process of creating" complete with lots of charming and bizarre doodles from the author's hand.
June 3, 2013
Of all my voicemails, my therapist leaves the lengthiest messages. He calls to change an appointment and brackets the proposed time change with a series of free associations about why we need to reschedule. I delight in the circular logic and meandering thoughts in these voicemails. It is a reversal of my position as analysand and I can freely analyze the recorded words of my analyst.
Marion Milner’s book, On Not Being Able to Paint, originally published in 1950, and now in its second edition, is also bracketed with a wealth of language; forwards, prefaces, and end notes bookend the original text. In the second edition there is a brilliant forward by Anna Freud and an incisive introduction by Janet Sayers. In addition, Milner added a thorough appendix that concisely reiterates each movement of the book in numbered sections. This appendix is the kind of text that should be revisited annually and proposes that analysis, painting, and looking at painting all provide a space for reverie.
Much of Milner’s work as an author explored transcendence in art and reverie, that is the merging of object and subject. Marion Milner was an author and psychoanalyst, and one of the first to write extensively about journaling and the nature of creativity. She was a contemporary and friend of D.W. Winnicott.
Read a full review by John Houck on the Art Book Review:
http://theartbookreview.org/2012/08/2...
Marion Milner’s book, On Not Being Able to Paint, originally published in 1950, and now in its second edition, is also bracketed with a wealth of language; forwards, prefaces, and end notes bookend the original text. In the second edition there is a brilliant forward by Anna Freud and an incisive introduction by Janet Sayers. In addition, Milner added a thorough appendix that concisely reiterates each movement of the book in numbered sections. This appendix is the kind of text that should be revisited annually and proposes that analysis, painting, and looking at painting all provide a space for reverie.
Much of Milner’s work as an author explored transcendence in art and reverie, that is the merging of object and subject. Marion Milner was an author and psychoanalyst, and one of the first to write extensively about journaling and the nature of creativity. She was a contemporary and friend of D.W. Winnicott.
Read a full review by John Houck on the Art Book Review:
http://theartbookreview.org/2012/08/2...
December 22, 2019
Although I gave this book four stars, I’d never read it again nor recommend to others that they attempt to locate and read it (published in 1957, it was a tough one to track down). It is,as one other reviewer said, ‘dense’. There were many, many times when I wondered why I’d gone to such lengths to find and borrow a copy. But then I’d read a paragraph of profound insight, clearly expressed, and that would keep me slogging through the next ten pages of tiny academic writing. I’ve got post-its marking maybe 15 instances of such insight, making this a solid “4 star but you might not want to bother” book.
September 24, 2025
I apologize in advance for what might be a long and ambling review. The short and sweet of it is: this is fantastic, strange, and contorts the reader into all manner of hitherto unimagined comforts and encouragements. It is one of the most unclassifiable books I’ve ever read, and when I try to summarize it, I find I always end up missing the point of it entirely.
When I took an undergraduate course on Descartes, we were taught about two different ways of presenting philosophical thinking: the analytic and the synthetic. The analytic (in this context, not referring to Analytic Philosophy of the Anglo-American variety) method was a way of guiding the reader along the thought process of the author. The reader would be presented with a puzzle, and then perhaps a couple of ideas about how to get around it, each of which would seem promising but turn out to be inadequate in some way. Finally, a solution that the author felt was adequate would be presented, reasons given, possible objections responded to, and so on. The synthetic, on the other hand, presented the stereotypical system: you, the reader, were given basic principles, sometimes explained or expanded by sub-premises, and then further premises that followed from those basic premises. Spinoza’s Ethics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus are examples of this latter method.
Now, aesthetics as a whole never really appealed to me because the stuff I was exposed to was almost inevitably presented in a synthetic mode: it was systematic, it seemed to look down on art from the vantage point of God, and it told us how to experience it. I was perfectly happy to experience art, music, film and literature in my own way, and cared very little for this theological approach to the things that meant so much to me personally.
One of the many great things about Milner’s book is that it approaches art exclusively from the perspective of her own satisfactions and dissatisfactions. There are gods and demons aplenty here, but they are brought into the world through her experience of art. And there is plenty of discussion of the nature of reality, but it is approached, wonderfully and in ways I still can’t quite explain, through her attempts to be creative, rather than given at the start. Reality is discovered to be other than what we assumed, and this discovery comes about through the wrestling (and my goodness, does Milner wrestle! She has a strength of inquisitiveness that most philosophers would kill to have) with the most subjective and intimate experiences of art she can articulate.
It shouldn’t work - it should become a mess of a book, and disintegrate into babble. But it doesn’t - it yields the most profound thinking, and what is even more remarkable, it yields a book that feels what I can only describe as “kind.” What I mean by that, I guess, is that this is a book that really tries to help its readers, and yet avoids entirely the generic conventions of “self-help” books.
If, like me, you were a bit put-off by the “readings” of her own artwork at first, I can only implore you to stick with it - when you begin to see where they are taking her, you will be hooked, and it will go from seeming far-fetched to feeling inevitable, necessary.
When I took an undergraduate course on Descartes, we were taught about two different ways of presenting philosophical thinking: the analytic and the synthetic. The analytic (in this context, not referring to Analytic Philosophy of the Anglo-American variety) method was a way of guiding the reader along the thought process of the author. The reader would be presented with a puzzle, and then perhaps a couple of ideas about how to get around it, each of which would seem promising but turn out to be inadequate in some way. Finally, a solution that the author felt was adequate would be presented, reasons given, possible objections responded to, and so on. The synthetic, on the other hand, presented the stereotypical system: you, the reader, were given basic principles, sometimes explained or expanded by sub-premises, and then further premises that followed from those basic premises. Spinoza’s Ethics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus are examples of this latter method.
Now, aesthetics as a whole never really appealed to me because the stuff I was exposed to was almost inevitably presented in a synthetic mode: it was systematic, it seemed to look down on art from the vantage point of God, and it told us how to experience it. I was perfectly happy to experience art, music, film and literature in my own way, and cared very little for this theological approach to the things that meant so much to me personally.
One of the many great things about Milner’s book is that it approaches art exclusively from the perspective of her own satisfactions and dissatisfactions. There are gods and demons aplenty here, but they are brought into the world through her experience of art. And there is plenty of discussion of the nature of reality, but it is approached, wonderfully and in ways I still can’t quite explain, through her attempts to be creative, rather than given at the start. Reality is discovered to be other than what we assumed, and this discovery comes about through the wrestling (and my goodness, does Milner wrestle! She has a strength of inquisitiveness that most philosophers would kill to have) with the most subjective and intimate experiences of art she can articulate.
It shouldn’t work - it should become a mess of a book, and disintegrate into babble. But it doesn’t - it yields the most profound thinking, and what is even more remarkable, it yields a book that feels what I can only describe as “kind.” What I mean by that, I guess, is that this is a book that really tries to help its readers, and yet avoids entirely the generic conventions of “self-help” books.
If, like me, you were a bit put-off by the “readings” of her own artwork at first, I can only implore you to stick with it - when you begin to see where they are taking her, you will be hooked, and it will go from seeming far-fetched to feeling inevitable, necessary.
May 16, 2024
This is a peculiar book and one I would be hard pressed to try to explain. Marion Milner was a psychoanalyst, of the 2nd gen group of Freudians in England known as the "Middle Group"--I don't understand the fine shades, but she was somewhere in between people who took his word and methods as gospel and those who didn't, without adhering to a different school entirely (i.e. she wasn't a Jungian; she was under the influence of Winnicott, someone I like and admire).
Anyway, in addition to this, she was a self-described "Sunday painter," who was frustrated, as many artists are, with the business of being encouraged by her teachers to reproduce the seen world, without understanding why that was to be done. She decided on her own to begin doing what she calls free drawings, in which she brings images together as freely as she is able to without deliberately controlling them (but still as representations of "life," e.g. birds, landscapes, various imaginary monsters, rooms, furniture, etc.). Quite a few of these are reproduced in the book. They are childlike. I don't actually understand how people do this (unless I'm doodling in a meeting, I can't do it). She then does something quite interesting, which is that she acknowledges to herself that these works are similar to dreams, in that they bring together disparate images into a frame of sorts, as the beginning and end of a dream does, and she begins to describe the works as if they are dreams being analyzed. I think this is quite an interesting idea, although whether it can be extended to highly preconceived works (and she does talk about this) I wonder. (I'm thinking about something like a medieval or early Renaissance painting). I also think it could be a problem trying to do this until some time after executing a work, as it might stall you instead of illuminate you, if you aren't ready to get the message, as it were.
I sought out this book because I thought it was about being blocked, and it's not. It's about her inability to be happy with the work she produces, which is a different thing. She DOES the work, but never found it satisfactory or meaningful until she began the free-association sort of drawings. Her description of this process is the bulk of the book, then at the end of the book, she describes how the process helped her to realize the use of a medium and the act of mark-making to bring together the internal workings of the mind and feelings and the external production of the work. It's quite thought provoking. It also made for extremely difficult reading. There's a certain point where I think it's a bit dangerous to read things like this when you really should just be sitting in a room making work; I think she'd agree with that.
She's a very intriguing person to me in another aspect, which is that she basically went through this same set of struggles with keeping a journal, and she wrote a very famous book (in analytic circles) called "A Life of One's Own." Originally she published that book as well as this one under a pseudonym. I'm sure she was concerned about what her colleagues would think of these explorations. I've kept a journal since I was about 12 years old, and I've never gone back to read them in spite of carefully maintaining them, probably more than any other of my possessions. I have felt that I'd like to reread them now; there are days when I feel like I have nothing more of interest to write (to myself, no one else has ever read these journals in any meaningful sense). I know that can't be true, I feel very alive, if consternated about a good bit of it at this moment, alive but not free? Anyway, I can't decide if it would be a better idea to read her book and then organize and reread 50+ years or so of my own life or do it the other way around. I'm waiting for this other book from the library; maybe when I see it I'll be able to make up my mind.
Anyway, in addition to this, she was a self-described "Sunday painter," who was frustrated, as many artists are, with the business of being encouraged by her teachers to reproduce the seen world, without understanding why that was to be done. She decided on her own to begin doing what she calls free drawings, in which she brings images together as freely as she is able to without deliberately controlling them (but still as representations of "life," e.g. birds, landscapes, various imaginary monsters, rooms, furniture, etc.). Quite a few of these are reproduced in the book. They are childlike. I don't actually understand how people do this (unless I'm doodling in a meeting, I can't do it). She then does something quite interesting, which is that she acknowledges to herself that these works are similar to dreams, in that they bring together disparate images into a frame of sorts, as the beginning and end of a dream does, and she begins to describe the works as if they are dreams being analyzed. I think this is quite an interesting idea, although whether it can be extended to highly preconceived works (and she does talk about this) I wonder. (I'm thinking about something like a medieval or early Renaissance painting). I also think it could be a problem trying to do this until some time after executing a work, as it might stall you instead of illuminate you, if you aren't ready to get the message, as it were.
I sought out this book because I thought it was about being blocked, and it's not. It's about her inability to be happy with the work she produces, which is a different thing. She DOES the work, but never found it satisfactory or meaningful until she began the free-association sort of drawings. Her description of this process is the bulk of the book, then at the end of the book, she describes how the process helped her to realize the use of a medium and the act of mark-making to bring together the internal workings of the mind and feelings and the external production of the work. It's quite thought provoking. It also made for extremely difficult reading. There's a certain point where I think it's a bit dangerous to read things like this when you really should just be sitting in a room making work; I think she'd agree with that.
She's a very intriguing person to me in another aspect, which is that she basically went through this same set of struggles with keeping a journal, and she wrote a very famous book (in analytic circles) called "A Life of One's Own." Originally she published that book as well as this one under a pseudonym. I'm sure she was concerned about what her colleagues would think of these explorations. I've kept a journal since I was about 12 years old, and I've never gone back to read them in spite of carefully maintaining them, probably more than any other of my possessions. I have felt that I'd like to reread them now; there are days when I feel like I have nothing more of interest to write (to myself, no one else has ever read these journals in any meaningful sense). I know that can't be true, I feel very alive, if consternated about a good bit of it at this moment, alive but not free? Anyway, I can't decide if it would be a better idea to read her book and then organize and reread 50+ years or so of my own life or do it the other way around. I'm waiting for this other book from the library; maybe when I see it I'll be able to make up my mind.
October 9, 2025
There are some wonderful phenomenological descriptions of what it is like to be immersed in creative activity. Moreover, there are a few key claims that are true and worth thinking about further. This book on the whole, however, is full with so many examples and meanderings that it is difficult to find the good stuff within it. Also, many of these examples and analyses of them do not deepen the claims at play but only serve as top-down applications of these claims.
The key claim is that drawing without pre-planning it or being overly self-conscious makes it possible to see goings-on in our unconscious fantasy world, and moreover, we can encounter it with a freedom (i.e., we aren’t as threatened by what we see, and our next action, e.g., in taking the brush in a certain direction rather than another, controls or develops it), which we can’t find in everyday life.
It’s difficult for me to remember after trying to read through this book, and ultimately skimming large portions of it due to its redundancy, how Milner could’ve filled 17 chapters on this topic. I guess many of the chapters involve, in effect, applying certain standard psychoanalytic ideas to explaining either why we face practical challenges in the creative process; or, to showing how features of our creative products serve as evidence for the validity of these ideas. For example, Milner spends a chapter focusing on how if a person is repressed, they won’t be able to draw as well as somebody who is not. Many “applications” like this are self-evident and not very interesting.
I think my favorite aspect of the book are some of its phenomenological descriptions. For example: “How colors in nature alter when I shut my eyes; they seem to grow and glow and develop. It looks as if color ought to be very free to develop in its own way from the first impression” or, (concerning the objects one draws) “Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired. Yet what the soul desires is nothing arbitrary. Life is no objectless dream.” As one can see, there’s nothing surprising or insightful in such descriptions, but they are nice.
The key claim is that drawing without pre-planning it or being overly self-conscious makes it possible to see goings-on in our unconscious fantasy world, and moreover, we can encounter it with a freedom (i.e., we aren’t as threatened by what we see, and our next action, e.g., in taking the brush in a certain direction rather than another, controls or develops it), which we can’t find in everyday life.
It’s difficult for me to remember after trying to read through this book, and ultimately skimming large portions of it due to its redundancy, how Milner could’ve filled 17 chapters on this topic. I guess many of the chapters involve, in effect, applying certain standard psychoanalytic ideas to explaining either why we face practical challenges in the creative process; or, to showing how features of our creative products serve as evidence for the validity of these ideas. For example, Milner spends a chapter focusing on how if a person is repressed, they won’t be able to draw as well as somebody who is not. Many “applications” like this are self-evident and not very interesting.
I think my favorite aspect of the book are some of its phenomenological descriptions. For example: “How colors in nature alter when I shut my eyes; they seem to grow and glow and develop. It looks as if color ought to be very free to develop in its own way from the first impression” or, (concerning the objects one draws) “Every real object must cease to be what it seemed, and none could ever be what the whole soul desired. Yet what the soul desires is nothing arbitrary. Life is no objectless dream.” As one can see, there’s nothing surprising or insightful in such descriptions, but they are nice.
November 17, 2019
There is a great deal to be read. I can see painters stepping with dignity out of their Self and following the author’s words - marching up a white-washed alley toward a better understanding. All in all, one may create an identity that is at best universal in order to arrive at a communal agreement - a creative artist should seek communion at all times. Hadi Atallah, author of 'Rosemary Bluebell.'
March 12, 2025
A director suggested this book to me— the book is about someone who is not creative, exploring their own creative process. Then, it is clear that the book really resonated with him, because his movies are terrible. That being said there’s some good little chunks of philosophy in here. I think it was a very interesting experiment in creativity and human nature. It was a bit of a hard read. I might just be a bad reader though because I keep saying that about books
September 30, 2024
what a book to read before starting my art degree :”) read in a day and will definitely be reading again. Although some parts were dense and i found myself drifting, the text always managed to captured me right back in. The appendix was such a wonderful way to end this reading!! I can’t wait to see how this book influences my own art :”)
unfinished
November 6, 2023Found this in the library at Pendle Hill (1950 hardback) and spent a rewarding half-hour with the author’s sketches and musings. Fascinating approach to an interrogation of creativity and art via the author’s own experiences.
August 28, 2019
Wonderful. Read this one.
February 8, 2020
‘The outline does not excist’. Thankyou
February 18, 2020
A strange, dense, maddening, utterly unique book about the creative process. Field was a "Sunday painter" who was frustrated with her lack of progress, so turned an analytical magnifying glass onto herself to try and understand why. The tool she embraced most fully was a series of free drawings, which she then interpreted psychoanalytically for hidden symbols of her subconscious struggles. I'd spend pages rolling my eyes at some of the Freudian exegeses, only to be gobsmacked by a paragraph so true and insightful that it was as if a golden ray of light had shone down upon it. In the end, I find the conclusions she came to about the creative mind to be valuable and compelling, while remaining a bit bewildered and skeptical of some of the paths she took to get there. I've never ready anything quite like it.
October 28, 2020
I found very stimulating food for thought concerning the painting process and what I, myself had begun to articulate as a war between 'left and right brain', (my words). Though I sometimes found her analysis of her own work a bit tedious, her insights and articulation of them are well worth the trip. The references she uses could be accused of being dated, but they gave me a sense of perspective beyond the familiar and oft-quoted.
November 14, 2015
I found this book an interesting and challenging psycho-analytic journey through one artist’s attempts to define and unlock her own creativity. The analysis side bordered on oversharing, I thought, but clearly the process of analysing her own ‘free-drawings’ was an important part of the overall experience that Milner went on through the course of her own experiment in creativity.
September 28, 2017
I read this book in 2003 and have returned to it again. This dense work explores the unconscious and preconscious barriers to free sketching using the author's own experience. The insights could be broadened to all creative activities. Marion Milner used the pseudonym Joanna Field.
November 7, 2011
A good conversation. Inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews