In part one, I talked about the constant injuries I faced by overworking as an artist. During my recovery, I started to think about what would draw me back to my studio to start creating again.
The answer was simple: it had to be really, really fun. Peaceful but Energizing at the same time. Inspiring. Joyful. But what happened in the past that put me in a state of…not that? Of instead feeling stress, unworthy, like I wasn’t getting anywhere and blocked? After all, the reason I pursued art as a full-time career in the first place is because I had so much fun doing it, and felt so much flow. But something along the way has brought me out of it.
After examining my thoughts and beliefs, I identified a couple that were creating an oppressive environment for creation, instead of a freeing and expansive one:
As a child, I always felt like I wasn’t good enough at art despite the encouragement and praise I received from others. Part of it is a result of growing up in a digital culture, where I constantly compared myself to artists online and saw that often the ones with the most likes had the most recognition and following, and I assumed they would be the ones who “made it.”
Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. But my point is this — there are always exceptions to the rule. And a lot more than you think. I also believe other parts of our culture perpetuate this idea that you have to hustle and grind and put 10,000 hours into ANYTHING to be worthy (Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule”). Not just worthy to achieve any fame and recognition, but worthy to even express yourself in the way you want to and have your message be heard by the people who need it.
Which is obviously false. I can’t tell you the number of artists that actually have relatively simple art that have touched the lives and others. And while I absolutely believe that improving your skills can be valueable and a wonderful thing to do, I think our society puts an emphasis on it to the point that it can put debilitating pressure on artists to improve, or else their work isn’t worthy or of value.
I think as artists, we somehow think we have to do everything ourselves. And that includes a lot of things that you don’t find fun.
Especially with full-time, we often get trapped with the things we think we SHOULD do versus the things we WANT to do. For example, we think in order to increase the value of our art we have to be more technical, or be really good at rendering a polished look. Or you see artists in the world doing a ton of research around their art, so you feel like you have to follow the same process. This puts us in a perpetuating cycle of doing things that we don’t really enjoy, which of course goes back to my original theme of losing the joy in art. But discovering why you lost it is also the key to finding it again.
In my personal practice, I realized I was doing the same thing again. I thought in order to get more clients I had to be more technical and be really good at a certain set of skills a technical artist would do, or be really good at coding. The thing is, none of these models work for me. I like building worlds, but not writing shaders for them. I like writing code, but not doing structural back-end code but rather prototyping mechanics. No job title really has exactly what I want to do. But that’s okay — because I exist to break the normal definitions, and create new ones for myself and others. Isn’t that what it means to be an artist, a creative?
I see in the new era for artists, the real value in art is actually how much you can express yourself, and skill is a compliment rather than the determining factor in that. And mastery is your self expression in the way that you perfectly envision it, being shared with the world, regardless of what shape or form it’s in. And the idea of doing that brings me the rush of wanting to go back to my studio, day after day.