It's hard to create without fear. Perhaps that's not exactly right. It's often easy to create, in a frenzy of vision and ideas; to allow a project to grow and take shape and fly. The truly hard part is letting our creation out into the world. It's a cold place, full of criticism and potential misunderstandings. How will your work hold up under close scrutiny? What will it say to viewers when you are not there to speak for it. Will it tell them all that you're a fool once your back is turned? As an artist, the difficulty lies in finding a way to trust in your own creative abilities, and to put a piece out there, in the public eye, trusting that it will be meaningful to some audience, somewhere.
In my experience, it is most difficult, as a fledgling artist, to get past the doubts of my non-artsy friends. I've reached an age where most of my friends and acquaintances have been working on a specific set of life goals for a while now: Find a "real" job, buy that first house, get started on that whole family thing. My goals are not the same. I went back to school, which isn't really all that uncommon. But I chose art school. Not a high-ranking choice amongst my 30-something crowd. I suspect that most of them wrote me off as insane a while back. Social gatherings devolve into awkward silence as I answer those "So, what do you do?" questions. "Fibre arts. Interesting. But what will you DO with that?"
In my mind, the answer is pretty simple. I will do what I've always been driven to do. I will do what I do already, and what I have done since I was a child. I will just do it better. I will have invested the time to cultivate and mature my visions and techniques. I will have taken the time and acquired the skills to make a business out of it. I will do art. I will do it as my living. It is what I am good at, and what I love. So I will do that.
Of course, that's my answer on a good day.
There are many other days where I wake up wondering if I've lost it altogether. Maybe this creative life really is just a series of hobbies that will keep me living in shabby one-bedroom apartments for the rest of my miserable life. Maybe I should just drop it and go to accounting school. Honestly, though, that seems ridiculously over-dramatic to me. I must, as an artist, learn to trust that I can make a go of it. Life is short, and I am creative. I think that it is wiser to cultivate the things that you honestly love, than to waste years cultivating a bank account in a job you hate. It is acceptable to use certain, lucrative skills to succeed: math? Sure. You're good at typing? Public speaking? Understanding systems? Those are great! You're sure to succeed. You're good with wool? Hmmmmm.....
In my mind, success is doing something that you love, and making a living at it that lies somewhere on the spectrum between modest and fabulous. I love creating, and making finely crafted, beautiful things. I feel that my responsibility is to infuse the world with as much beauty as I am able. It is hard to be confident, especially knowing that even those who appreciate art will scrutinize my work. There will always be those who don't think the world needs beauty (I respectfully disagree, and think they would change their minds were they to see a world without art, but that is another discussion entirely). All I can do is try my best, and the best I have to offer is art.
