Artist Lament
Artist Lament
my thoughts on being creative
Hello fellow Steemians,
I try myself in many disciplines
Illustration, painting, drawing, comics, singing, guitar, songwriting, poetry, fiction, pottery, street art.....
Not with a lot of success.
I know I'm not the best at all of this maybe I'm not even good at all.
I do it because it brings me joy.
But the essence of being an artist apart from being creative is to show your work, to explain your ideas and process, to perform.
Here the internet and platforms like this one are a blessing but also a curse.
You come across so much incredible talent that can be overwhelming and intimidating and I start hating myself.
'Why am I not as good as them?'
'Why don't I have the same talent?'
'I have been practising so much,why don't I improve?'
It gets worse when I don't seem to be able to gather an audience to actually look or listen.
Then my inner critic is turning on me, putting words of self hate into my head and ripping the little confidence I gathered to pieces.
That in turn makes me lose my motivation to try and practise to get better and results in my guitar sitting on its stand gathering dust and my paints drying out in their tubes.
But creating makes me happy and not creating feels like an essential part of myself is missing.
So after I have been hiding in my cave and licking my wounds for some time, I slowly crawl out to the light of day and stand up to try again...and again...and again.
Does it get any better? Not really, maybe I was born with a internalised sense of worthlessness
I believe the most important ability not only for an artist but for every human being is to love yourself, only if you achieve that can you appreciate your self and the work you do and give appreciation to the people around you.
Just some thoughts on self love and creativity that I wanted to share with you.
Until next time
Lots of Love
Geena
@steem-marketing has voted on behalf of @minnowpond.
If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowponds team on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond.
It's not often I'll share an old post, gauche it is, but I offer you the words of Robert W Service https://steemit.com/milestone/@bleedpoet/203
Don't get discouraged, not every post will strike a cord, my following is mainly bots, and yet I still aim to share new and interesting material.
Don't give up. It's that worthless feeling that keeps us humble, grounds our art.
I think a lot of us on Steemit share your sentiment.
Lovely but sad poem, thanks for your kind words and as I said after I pitied myself enough, I'm gonna get up and get back to work ;)
Ooo guitar and art and stuffs!! I like it! I think we all have that sense of worthlessness but it is how we stand up to it that counts. I like the look of your stuffs!
I relate to everything you said. But the way I try to see it is: creating art is the pleasure/joy and sharing the art is one benefit of it. I'm not sure if that makes sense actually.
I've been making music since 2000, and although I've done several side projects, I've never really released my own solo music officially (which I intended for over a decade). I made thousands, but only a handful surfaced. But I enjoyed creating every single one of them and the time I put in. I'm not dismissing the fact that I was discouraged and stopped for a couple months; but when you are passionate about something, you'll naturally come back to it.
You might have heard about this and not to necessarily compare: Vincent Van Gogh completed about 900 paintings and over 1000 drawings/sketches, but only sold one artwork in his lifetime.
I'm not sure what my point is...
I agree with everything you say, just sometimes I feel that I am scrutinising myself too much and it felt good to just have a rant about it ;)