Is your Art ready for the World?
This can be a tricky question because we live in a world of social media, which encourages showing our work all the time, and often to the detriment of our potential in making our best work that reflects our individuality.
I often tell my students at the beginning that the best art practice is a closed studio door. The best studio practice is also a return to a closed studio door again and again throughout your career. Why? So you can hear your own thoughts and opinions without the clutter of outer opinions. This isn’t always easy to hear. But! Stay with me on this for a moment.
If you were learning the piano and you finally mastered a song, would you run out and perform that song? Perhaps! However, in a world of over-saturation, we want to have a certain level of cultivation before we enter the stage. Especially if we want to be taken seriously.
Most of us think we should get our work out there right away and essentially share everything, ready or not.
If you are unsure if the ten paintings you just did are good or not, then you may post them online to receive some kind of validation. It’s possible you get more likes on a piece that is not your personal favorite. Now, because you received such admiration for a particular piece, you start painting in that style.
What happened is you disrupted the dialogue and the relationship with your intuitive self. You did this before you ever got a chance to see where your unique ideas and brilliancy of individuality would lead you. We need to make bad paintings when we first start. This is how we learn. When we expect to make a good enough painting from the very start, it keeps us there and stunts our growth. We make work that is good enough and often looks like everyone else’s.
I suggest closing your door and allowing yourself to make bad paintings. Listen to yourself. Where does the painting want to go? Follow the thread. This is the beginning of working with your intuition (we will cover why working with your intuition can produce your most informative work in another blog post).
Your work is ready for the outer world when you decide for yourself, which five out of 100 paintings are the best ones. Just because they are collecting dust in your closet, isn’t a good enough reason put them out there and to try and sell them.
Many artists burn paintings, paint over them, and let them collect dust. This is all ok and very much a part of the process! Give yourself permission.