Okay, here’s the thing. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m an “artist”. I draw, I paint, I make art things all the freaking time. That’s my thing. But, am I An Artist?
In my own eyes, no, I’m not yet An Artist, even though I’ve done enough art – including paid commission-work – to be considered a professional artist. Or, I was. I haven’t made money from my art for a long time, and the times I have were few and far between even back when they were most plentiful.
But that’s professional art; am I not An Artist anyway? Again, no. I view myself as an art student with aspirations to be An Artist. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I feel like I’m not up to the standard of what I would consider being An Artist. I’m not sure exactly what it’ll take to get there.
Perhaps I’ll consider myself an artist once I finish studying art in college? Probably not. No, I think it has more to do with my own consistency with my rate of creating “good” things.
You see, right now, I don’t create things I like very often. I usually find it surprising and rare for something I made to look good in my own eyes, and then I find that other people don’t usually agree when I share those ones online. I don’t make things – even crappy things – often enough. Sure, I doodle. I spent a week doing several pose studies each day. But it was a struggle and I’m back to how I was before now with spending several days making nothing at all, just wasting the day on the internet. It gives instant gratification of being lazily entertained, but at the end of the day, I feel guilty because I wasted a whole day.
I don’t really have a point I’m trying to make besides the point that I don’t think I’m consistent enough to be labelled as An Artist and I’m hoping writing this might force me to work harder on getting to that point. All the time I see artists on social media and I get this knotted feeling in my belly of jealousy and wishing I was as good and successful as them, but the truth is that I just need to stop wasting time and start making shitty things so that eventually I make good things.
So, in conclusion, I need to stop waiting for inspiration to strike and just do it. Like Chuck Close says,
“Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All of the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”
That’s a good quote for all creative-types and I’m going to try to implement that philosophy in my life. Wish me luck.
Brain O'Liam 