"Your identity is not what you do."
"Your identity is not what you do."
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My first ten years as an artist I spent trying to "hack" the art business. How to create the "right" artwork to sell and make a living. Not a bad goal, especially for any artist trying to make a living in our world. After all, money provides safety and comfort. The trouble with that goal is that art and capitalism rarely work well hand in hand. In other words the creative process isn't illuminated by the act of trying to make money from it. This led to me stepping away from my art business for nearly a year so I could spend more time looking inward and discovering why I wanted to create art in the first place. It dawned on me that the more I identified as an "artist" the harder it was for me to focus on what made me tick. All artists need to be careful with latching on to an identity that has more to do with what they do than who they actually are.
All artists need to be careful with latching on to an identity that has more to do with what they do than who they actually are.
How did this realization impact my path forward? Well it had a profound effect on my motivation. Consider the last time you created a piece of art with the hope that it would sell imediately or gain recognition? How did it make you feel? I remember hosting several one person shows in my first 10 years and not a single piece of art selling. I walked away defeated and questioning my self worth. Sound familiar? We all tend to invest too much of ourselves in the results or output of our efforts as a representation of who we are. The less results we produce the less we feel important or "good enough". Here is the real kicker. Ready? The more results we get from producing for the sake of validation the more we aim to continue producing. The problems is, that it's never enough to satisfy our need for that validation. It's an endless hamster wheel and it never satisfies us for long. We lean into the next achievement all the while the art we create and it's deeper meaning take a back seat or no seat at all. Eventually we find ourselves like a worker in a production factory pumping out soulless meaningless art, one after another. Then we wake up one day unsatisfied, joyless and exhausted. Perhaps, that's not quite you, but after spending time researching this topic on several art forums online I found it to be the norm rather than exception. That's when I realized that I am not an artist. Art is something I do, and love creating but it is not who I am.
Art is something I do, and love creating but it is not who I am.
So how does one go from obsessively focused on output to intentionally creating with deep meaning and purpose? I think that is non art question and more a personal journey of honest reflection (therapy is a good start). For me it was picking apart why I felt the need to get validation from my art. I found narcissism to be the root of that desire, and to be clear we all need a healthy does of narcissism. But too much can over inflate our reasons for existing. The need to feel special, for me was an obsession that led to the fallout of not only my desire to create but the end of several personal relationships. The interesting thing about discovering more about yourself and addressing issues you have been avoiding or failing to identify is that it then provides a voice for you to interpret in your art. By finding your true human nature, good or bad (sometimes both), you develop a voice unique to you but also highly relatable, after all we all are human aren't' we? For me, I began writing and sharing my experiences with family members. I dug deeper reading and researching topics that helped me understand my trauma, and how I've learned to cope. These ideas inform my art and give it a much deeper purpose than just making money and serving my narcissism.
These ideas inform my art and give it a much deeper purpose than just making money and serving my narcissism.
Okay, so that was a lot for a blog post. I expose all of this because I think at the end of the day our job as artists is to help uncover, interpret, and communicate the human experience (through our own lens) in a non-verbal (emotions are commanded by the non-verbal part of our brain) to help others find solace, relatability and maybe healing when they find it. Ironically, when we find something that touches our emotions we tend to want to include it in our daily lives. In other words art that touches sells itself.
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