I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Mostly because the single biggest block owned by many artists--visual, musical, performance--is they feel if they don't "make it", it's because they aren't "good enough."
I love to quote my friend Lori W. Simons on this one. I was curious if the 2-D art world sorts itself out so neatly. Do the best artists become the most successful artists? She hesitated and then said quietly, "Being good HELPS." You can see Lori's work at http://www.lwsimons.com/
What does that mean? It means that you can be successful at whatever you throw your heart into, and it isn't directly related to how good you are. Or whether you're "the best". Or even whether you're one of the top 10.
It's about how badly you want it, and how hard you're willing to work at it. How smart you are about maximizing your opportunities, and how savvy you are with managing the business side of your art.
No one ran harder or farther from their art than I did. But it just wouldn't go away. I finally gave up. My turning point was when I realized that if I did not pay attention to this, I would be destroying a part of myself that was too important to my very life. I had hit bottom, too. My exact words to my husband were these:
"I have to be an artist, or I'm going to die. I don't even care anymore if I'm a GOOD artist. I just have to do it."
Period. Nuff said. I had to swallow my pride, give up making judgments about how good I would/could or wouldn't/couldn't be, and just do it.
And you know what? Once I gave up basing my entire act on caring what others thought, that's when my art began to hit its stride. Once I was making art I cared about, deeply, and once it came straight from my heart, that's when I began to achieve some success with it.
That, and a lot of hard work, too. Ya gotta wanna, but ya also just gotta DO it.
This doesn't mean the road was easy after that. There were still a lot of twists and turns. There were adjustments, suggestions, modifications along the way. But the core vision was always there. I had a story to tell, and a story to get out into the world.
Which brings us to Myth #2 about artists. "Only the best artists are successful artists."
NOT.
Once more, with feeling. It helps if you're good. You'll get a little further a little faster. But just being good won't ensure your success. And conversely, you can be highly successful even if you're not the BEST.
Need proof? Look at Olympic-quality athletes. Sometimes they lose by 1/100 of a second, or 1/100 of a point. When we get into subjective judgment about who is "the best", and that is determined by what the temperature was that day, or whether those new athletic shoes were rubbing the wrong way, or whether a competitor turned an inch too far back, we are talking about, "Who was the best, in the minds of those particular jurors, at that particular moment on that specific day." Are we saying those other competitors were not sucessful, too? Nah... It may not have been their day, but they are still amazing athletes.
Now...would you rather run a 24-mile marathon, or get started on a new piece today?
Get in that studio! Don't worry about how good you are. Just do it good.
