Today Lee heard me talk about the show I’ve just finished with all its conflicting messages. He said, “You have everything—a home, a family, food on the table. You can make the art you want. If you had dealers, you would be making the art they can sell, not the art you want.”
True. That is exactly the trend I’m now fighting.
But there is also the flip side: Wanting the money, the success, makes you work a little harder.
After reviewing the work of people who won the so-called “genius grants” (the MacArthur Fellows Program), someone remarked the work seemed to lose focus and passion. There may be a sort of “necessary tension” needed to keep people working at their peak.
I realize I have been focusing on financial success and not on making the very biggest, best art I can. There is a balance to be maintained—I have to be hungry enough for the success to have the drive to create and market the art. My art does no good to the world resting in my studio--it needs to be out in the world. But chasing success will lead me away from what makes my work powerful, by encouraging me to listen to something other than my heart.
And maybe I just need to wait. It may just not be the time to achieve the success I dream of. It’s there, I have no doubt. But I cannot rush it or force it. It will come out of doing the work.
I want to find the balance in that.
