Art and Artist
If you’re going to do art, you cannot make art or create things for other people. You have to create from the joy of your own creating. If other people like it, it is secondary. Otherwise, failure is imminent – wrongness, not-good-enoughness, all is going to come down the pike.
If you’re going to do art, then you have to do it just because you love doing the art and it’s fun to do. If you’re doing it for other people, it will always be judged – there will always be people who don’t like it and people who do like it. If you’re doing it for other people, then you will be waiting to see how much value or worth you have based upon other peoples’ judgments. If you are making things for people to buy, then you are making it not for the sake of making art, you are making it for some prescribed idea of what people will like so that they will buy it.
The problem will all of this is that a lot of creativity dies and a lot of your old programs, your unhealthy programs like, “I’m not good enough” or “I’m worthless” or “My worth is based on other peoples’ opinions or how they think about me” will be placed in this art and you will be constantly faced with all of those old issues – which will eventually take the life joy out of your art.
When you do something, or anything, in life you do it for the love of doing it. If it doesn’t turn out the way that you would like or that you thought it would, it could mean several things. One being that you have a little box that you’re trying to fit yourself into that will get you approval or kudos from other people because you did such a good thing. Another is, because you’re just rigid in your ideas and thought. It’s quite funny how many artists are really rigid in their art because they have a pre-idea of how it should turn out and should be, and they have no ability to allow the art to flow and turn out the way that it will be. They’re not flexible in other words, they’re very rigid in the way that it should turn out.
Quite often, that will lead to perfectionism, which always leads to wrongness and failure because nobody is perfect. So maybe it’s a good idea for you to reevaluate why you’re doing art, what do you actually love about art, or are you doing it for some weird combination of, “I like to do art, maybe I can make some money from it, maybe everyone will like and then everybody will see how good I am”
(Cut off comment on the judgment of art not being of good quality, technically accurate, or “good” in general)
