Making art for yourself

I took a long break from making art after I published my book in 2015.

I finished the sketchbook I had and then left its replacement untouched for months.

I remember opening the book up for the first time, and banishing the blankness from its pages. Well, from the first page. It was another six months before I opened it again. In this fashion I slowly worked, adding strange things into my works. Cat hair held down with scotch tape. Actual acrylic paint. Whatever the hell this was:

No, I’m not scanning this monstrosity, you can have a shitty phone picture.

During this time my art became unpredictable, angst-ridden, and confusing.

It’s been just over three years since that initial sketch, and I’m still discovering what went wrong, how I burned out. I’m 19 pages into that same sketchbook.

I knew I needed to stop selling art because it was becoming so much more about other people, what did they want to see? Did they like it? Were they willing to pay for it?

Some of my characters were very popular, yet some of the dearest to me were completely overlooked. The silence that met these characters felt like a rejection of a part of me.

I needed to separate myself from my art and other people’s views of it from my self-worth. I am more than the reception my art receives.

I was once a very talented musician, and the thing about being a performer is the music already exists, you just have to learn to play it. You can alter things, and express things differently, but the framework is there.

In music, you learn works by the masters, play them beautifully, record them (maybe you need to get some legal permissions if the pieces are not very old or in public domain), and you sell that, or people pay you to perform. It’s not easy, by any means. But it is rather straight forward.

That’s… Not how visual art works.

At least in my experience, you don’t want to sell art that’s all copies of great artists. Some people make it work, but it’s not the standard by far.

Furthermore my skills and understanding of myself as an artist come nowhere near what I had created as a bassoonist.

So it’s difficult not to want validation. It’s difficult to make art just for myself.

Yet I still want to make art.

So, I do make it, I keep making it, and I will continue to do so.

I’ll try to separate my self-worth from what other people think (or don’t think) about the pieces I make.

When I started this blog in 2010 I wrote a post about becoming the person you want to be, and taking the steps you need to get there. I decided to go back to that to see how much it still applies:

I can change. I have changed. I can stand my ground. I can be strong, and I can be happy. I can overcome my fears and my doubts. I can push the limits of what I think I can and cannot do. I can find out that slow persistence is still progress.

So here’s to slow persistence, here’s to overcoming, and here’s to doing things even if they scare us, and even if it takes three years to get rolling again.

Thank you for reading. Let me know below, what do you struggle with and need validation for?

Let’s do this together,
~AJ

Excerpt from Musings of a burnt out visionary

Excerpt from Musings of a Burnt-Out Visionary, A fictional journal of “the way things could have gone” inspired by real life events. It’s my NaNoWriMo project!

“Save me, please!

I find myself screaming this on the inside every day. It starts out as a whisper in the morning, as my alarm causes me to stir in my bed. I lie next to the greatest blessing in my life, whom I have begun to take very much for granted. I strive to feel the love that my depression has buried deep inside of me, but it is inaccessible, unattainable. It lies in wait; it hibernates. Oh how I wish I could hibernate as well. Never wake me! I try to say to the alarm. Put time on pause, please! Let me just sleep for three more weeks! Maybe then I can move around and scavenge for some food but not yet,

Sincerely: me.

But the alarm wakes me up and the warm, strong arms that hold me cannot keep me down forever. I pry myself away from his loving embrace and cry on the inside as I drag myself, head aching and dizzy, weak to the blinding lights even though I can hardly see; I drag myself.

Someone, please, save me.

I force down some food, something healthy I’m sure. Kisses goodbye, I love him so dearly but we cannot lie to ourselves about our responsibilities. We must go, we have to go, so we go. Silently, solemnly we leave each other to go about our dark, cloudy days. Alone, sad, cold, and so alone. Not to see each other until our drooping downcast eyes enter again, some 12 hours later that night.

The anxiety begins to build. As I go from job 1, to job 2, to job 3, as I complete task upon task, as I dredge through the rain and try to keep my eyes open in traffic, I become short of breath and temper. I begin to shake and feel the need to cry out. “Someone! Please! Save me!”

As bill upon bill floods in, and unexpected expenses (ranging from medical to mechanical) come out of the woodwork, as needs press against us and hours are hard to be met. As efforts for advancement fall short, and countless empathetic and skeptical peers exclaim at our situation I want to scream:

“Somebody! Please!! Anybody! Save us!”

But nobody comes swooping in with anything other than judgement and disbelief. It all stops there. Everyone wants somebody else to save us. Everybody wants somebody else to help us. And all we are doing is fighting with every fiber of our being to save ourselves. But we can’t save ourselves, we’ve done everything we can, and we’ve been left to die, to shrivel and dry up, to expend ourselves in our envious “youth” to pull upon the mystical “energy” that we all must have, tucked away, hiding inside some secret compartment of our lives.

We’re here, for who knows how long. Until someone graciously parts the curtains of opportunity, understands that minimum wage is not liveable wage, takes our resumes, our cover letters, and our buttoned up demeanor seriously. Someone who will dare to look at our portfolios and experience and forget our age.

We are not the norm, the expected, the type. Soon, someone will see us for who we are. We are on our own. But for now, our cries fall on deaf ears. We are expected to feed ourselves on reassurance, to clothe ourselves with empathy, to build our homes and families out of pity and sometimes even disgust. We ride on the incredulity of our elders and peers. We walk under the umbrella of comparisons and abandonment after we’ve proven one too many times, that we just work too hard and cannot be found for any fun any more.

They believe in us, we’ll “make it”, they say. We don’t need their help. They have no advice other than to seek out none, they made it, they’re happy, why can’t that be enough?

Our cries fall to the ground, mixing with the puddles of rain and tears. Our knees begin to erode from kneeling on the wet gravel, and mud stains our hands and feet. The tall figures around us, with their real suits made of actual fabric, not lies, their umbrellas of waterproof plastic shielding their eyes, their shoes shiny, their tummies full, these are the successful, the “don’t worries” the “you’ll be fine”s. They rush by to their beautiful children and their 9-5, hardly stopping long enough to pat us on the backs as they walk on by, saying “You’ll figure it out, don’t cry.”

“Musings of a burnt-out visionary” is a fictional account of “the way things could have gone” inspired by real life events I have dealt with. AKA don’t worry, we’re not actually starving or on the verge of eviction…at the moment.

Countless other young adults in America have also dealt with and are dealing with these pressing issues. We delay settling into a home, starting families, and getting married because we have no resources left to care for anybody but ourselves. Often, we don’t even have appropriate resources to care for ourselves. If this story impacted you, take some time to think of the young adults in your life. Give them a call, write them a message, listen to their concerns. And don’t stop at telling them “it will be okay”. They need your support, yes, but they also need your experience. Are your stories similar? Did you make it through okay? How did you do it? Do you know of any resources we can utilize? Why not tell us? Even if we’re a little busy studying for the exam next week and writing the paper that’s due tomorrow in between hours at three jobs; we’re listening. I promise.

If you are a young adult who is on your own, you have my solidarity. We’ll go out (to the store) for drinks (probably soda, to be honest) sometime, I think I have a free evening in a few months? I’ll start saving for it today.