What it means to be an artist and why it can feel so difficult to come to terms with it

If you know me or have read my welcome post, you'll know that I've recently decided to take the plunge into being an artist, mostly as a side job for now. Even at this moment, coming to terms with this label of "artist" is difficult.

The life of an artist is filled with the yo-yos of exciting take-your-breath-away moments where your soul feels full of passion and joy, like everything was always meant to be this way; and then there are the nearly crippling moments of doubt where you anguish in whether anyone would actually ever buy this “junk” and whether you will be able to keep your bills without having to resort to acts of cannibalism.

Needless to say, being an artist can be completely maddening at the best of times.

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If you don’t put yourself out there, you can’t sell anything (and you can't blame anyone else either).

Being an artist can feel like you're betting all your chips on yourself.

In the lead-up to creating my art business, I’ve looked at so many other artists’ pieces and websites, mostly to see what the market is like out in the Wild (I mean, Internet). This too can cause conflicting emotions.

Most of the time I feel completely inept by comparison: how could I ever even compete at this level or in such a seemingly already overly saturated market? And then I see pieces that (to me!) look like my three-year-old niece could have painted or drawn this, and am left wondering how the hell this artist makes a career out of this but I haven't?

It’s at moments like these that I realize that every person’s taste is so different, and the only thing separating that artist from me is that that artist has put himself/herself out there. Like playing the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket.

My cousin is a great example of this. She is an AMAZING singer and performer! I’m not saying this because she is family. I’m saying this because it’s empirically true.

She decided to make singing and performing in musicals her career. This is not an easy path in life, as you can guess, but with training, hard work, and hell of a lot of moxie, she has come to make a living out of her passions and been the lead in musicals such as Mary Poppins and Kiss Me Kate. If she hadn’t decided to put herself out there, she never would have landed these roles and thousands of people never would have heard her beautiful voice.

Without artists like her willing to put in the hard work to make her dreams come true, you would never have Van Gogh’s beautiful “Starry Night” to gaze upon; you would never have all those catchy musical tunes from Disney’s “The Lion King” stuck in your head; and you would certainly never have had the Food Network to drool over.

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And now, for a rant on creativity...

Creative pursuits, in my opinion, are so underappreciated and hardly fostered in this society anymore.

Even in my school days, kids were constantly being tested and pushed towards math, science, and reading, while programs like orchestra, art, and theater were being phased out, or if they existed, treated as a hobby and nothing more.

If you go back further in time, you can probably see the earlier beginnings of the squashing of the creative arts. Being a Millennial, I am the daughter of Baby Boomer parents, who in turn were the children of parents that went through the Great Depression – a time where you needed to focus on just surviving and putting food on the table however best you could; a time where art was not considered a necessity, but a nicety if you could afford it.

I truly believe that these values trickled down over time to my parents’ generation and then to my own; where, by the time they got to me, it was a firmly accepted belief that it’s nice if you can play an instrument, or paint, or sing, but at the end of the day, you had better get a “real” job.

I don’t blame my parents’ generation or even their parents’. I get it. We all need to survive. We all want our children to thrive and never suffer the same way that we did. It’s evolution.

But in the process of stamping out what was deemed not necessary, we kill what makes us human to begin with—creativity, passion, ingenuity. And it’s this stamping out of the creative arts that, I believe, causes me and all other creatives so much internal strife.

At my core, I don’t think that I’ve ever fully accepted this utilitarian dogma that the real world and the arts could never co-exist. I am a creative person, and when I don’t get to create, I feel a void that gets larger and larger every day. A void that over time and if left unchecked, I actually start feeling like I'm not truly creative and that it was all just a lie I told to myself.

I think about my infant son and wonder whether I would tell him to stamp down his passions if he ever told me he wanted to be a mystery writer? Of course not! Would you want to crush your friend's dream of becoming a professional baker? Heck no! If it makes them happy and brings them joy and doesn't hurt anyone, why would you want to crush your friend's spirit?

So then why should we be so quick to crush our own passions?

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So then, how do you find support in being an artist?

While I may not find a rousing showing of support in my artistic entrepreneurship from previous generations, I do have the support of my wonderful husband.

While on maternity leave from my paralegal job, he saw how happy I was creating my pieces and flat out told me to go for it: To be the artist that he knows I can be. Without a cheerleader like him, I know I certainly would never have gotten out of my own way to make this dream of being an artist a reality.

Find your own cheerleader -- a friend, a coworker, a great aunt, a teacher, a therapist, or whomever you trust -- to talk to about your passions! Tell them your ideas of pursuing your artistic happiness. You might be surprised at how they can inspire you to be the artist you know you can be. Even if they express doubts and you still feel passionate about it, know that their doubts come from a place of love and concern and keep going!

The legendary singer Nina Simone was asked once what it meant to her to truly be free. She said that it was to have no fear.

I would like to say that I have no fear, but that’s not true. However, with the support of at least one cheerleader, I think we can all learn to have no fear. We can learn to believe in ourselves as artists (and more!) and accept that we will have moments of doubt, but they do not define us or our art.

How have you found support as an artist? How easy or hard was it for you to pursue you creativity? Let me know in the comments!

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