“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”
~Robert Henri
Postcard - Impressions of Niagara
Over the past few blogs, I've written a lot about motivation, marketing and how to avoid burnout, particularly if our artwork isn't selling. As a result, I got quite a few personal messages from fellow artists who wrote about discouragement, about all the ways they were turning themselves inside out to be successful (financially) as artists, about the frustration they experienced when they saw work by artists they didn't feel was as good as their own selling well while they sold nothing. Most of these heart-wrenching letters were completely sincere and not a few people suggested that perhaps it was time to throw in the towel and either take some period of time off or get out of the art world except to putter at home for their own enjoyment. These friends had honestly tried everything they knew to market themselves. That's not to say there might not be other sites or methods out there that would work but at this point, they'd tried everything and had come to the conclusion that no one really wanted their artwork hanging on their walls.
The truth is that no matter how hard we've tried, most of us are NOT professional artists. I know a few of you who truly are but most of us are not. We're rank amateurs regardless of whether we have fancy cameras with $5000 lenses, a complete studio with stacks of canvases and $200 brushes, pens and notebooks full of ideas for our next story or poem, or the best kiln and clay on the market. What we're trying to do - most of us anyway - is market our hobby. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But we should not expect the kinds of results that a professional artist expects and strives for. And we should not be so frustrated and disappointed when we don't achieve that level of success.
I say hobby because being a professional artist/writer takes enormous discipline. It has nothing to do with how many courses we take or how many positive comments we get on the work we present to the world. It has to do with whether we cannot let a day go by without working at our art - not just for an hour or until some distraction comes along - but literally setting aside a good portion of our day to create. It has to do with writing or painting or sculpting even if we feel no inspiration today at all (and believe me I've gone through months where I complained that my muse was on vacation!). The wonderful writer, May Sarton, and the much loved Annie Dillard both wrote about writing for hours every morning after a walk - even if at the end of those hours everything they wrote went in the trash. It has to do with working through lunch if we're on a roll. It has to do with believing in ourselves enough to be persistent in marketing ourselves through every possible means. It has to do with not comparing ourselves to anyone else - or their success - because we believe in our gift and our talent. It has to do with knowing that no matter what happens - we could not give up what we love to do.
There is a lovely succinct little blog post that struck home to me when I read it and I think you might enjoy it too. Doug Hoppes wrote recently, "However, in my mind, if you really are meant to be an artist, you won't give up. It's part of who you are. Rather than having the fancy paper or pens, you'll get a ream of copy paper and a ballpoint pen and draw. Rather than having a fancy studio, you'll work at your desk... or dinner table... or wherever you can sit. Making art is not about having the fancy materials. It's about expressing yourself in only the way that you can imagine the world around you." Read the rest here: Ever felt like giving up? | Doug Hoppes Fine Art
If writer/artist is who you ARE, there's no way you could give it up and go back to being something or someone else. Be courageous (which means to have a strong heart) and be persistent and believe.
