Facebook shared a memory with me this morning of a painting I had shared 11 years ago. It was a progress photo. Incomplete. But if I am honest I think I like the incomplete painting better than what it eventually became.
I’ve spent the last year revisiting old ideas, exploring, getting out of my comfort zone.
And I don’t know why.
If you asked me in January, I would have told you that I felt stuck. An unintended consequence of chasing a niche like all the marketing programs tell you.
I’ve put so much effort into marketing over the last three years, spending thousands of dollars on classes to basically be told, make predictable art and use ads to sell it.
Consistency builds comfort they say. People want to know you as an artist.
But what happens when the version of yourself you're selling isn't the artist you want to be?
That’s the part of marketing that’s hard for me. This idea that we’re cherry-picking the best of ourselves for consumption. I don’t want to be consumed though, I want to talk. I want to make art that strikes up conversations.
And my art did that at one point and then it became consistent. Routine. Expected.
I niched out of myself and into this machine trying to feed algorithms and expectations. It sucked all the joy out of making art.
And I think that showed… people lost interest in my work and it was mentally hard on me. My business looked like it was going to fail again and so I figured if I was going to fail I might as well fail doing what I wanted.
The joy returned to my work.
People started showing up again.
I started to see my old art in new ways and realized there is a common thread through all of it. I’m not just a portrait artist. I’m an artist who is deeply and passionately interested in life and in people.
Art has always been one of the ways I try to understand myself and the world around me.
For the last decade or so I’ve watched people put each other in boxes. I’ve watched artists put themselves in boxes. We’re all niching down and attaching labels to what are arguably the most complex creatures to ever exist.
That painting that I shared in its incomplete form represented me better than the resolved painting.
Because even now at 48 I’m unresolved. I’m still searching for and finding new meaning in life each day.
And what is wonderful about all my meanderings this year is that I’ve opened up new ways of making the work that I love.
I don’t know what the next painting looks like. Hell I don’t even know what the current one is going to look like when it’s done.
I think that’s exciting.