Making Art - Work

What things end up “working,” and what things end up on the cutting room floor, are not always a matter of creative “preference,” but of history, necessity, and the current market.

And many other things that we simply can not control.

Things move on one way or another, with or without our permission.  Hard-edge business “types” and investors deeply focused on bottom ends understand this.  These are people who have trained themselves not to think romantically about ideas, or to get too attached to any one idea or thing.

Economic forecasts, statiscal analysis, the stuff of science, not art.

But us creative types have been trained to use a different sort of gift, intuitive skill (it IS a skill).  We create from the inside out.  We have learned to listen to ourselves - the deepest parts, to gleam which ideas and insights are really ours to pursue and which are not.

And it works for us.  It does.  But if we get too attached to a certain idea working out a certain way at a certain time it can be dangerous. Life is always moving on, with or without our permission.  The second we master the art of candle making, for instance, someone discovers electricity.

Technology is always pushing things forward, what we are inspired to do may fall out of fashion.  Will people still buy candles once electricity abounds?  Maybe.  Yes!  But not for the same reasons.  Why will people want candles once electricity is discovered?

That is what we must discover.

Or we can pout.  And write nasty posts about how electricity is bad and is ruining our society.  ;-) OR, stay focused on the essence of what you started and find ways to see how what you love to create still applies to the changing world around you!

Or perhaps you don’t force your creative pursuit to become an ecomonic engine.

In may be a form of mercy to take the financial pressure off what you love to do.  Perhaps you can earn or “make a living” doing something different from what you really love to create.  There are perhaps more tangible ways to serve people and get directly paid to do it.

The difficulty, always, with this approach, is that we give our “first-fruits” to something else, relagating our deep passion to a mere hobby (though a hobby need not be mere anything).  We can quickly, often, and easily get consumed with our “paying gig,” but don’t have to.

It takes very intentional rearranging of our life to prevent our passionate pursuits from only getting the leftovers. There are only so many hours in the day.

It takes extreme feats of discipline (getting up early, staying up late) to make important things a priority when not our primary focus.  We may get “lucky” and have people pay us (freelance) to do certain projects we already want to do.  But not everyone is so lucky.

The real luck is knowing what we want and getting to do it.  Being an artist is the greatest job in the world for that reason.  Even with no pay. And when we simply buckle down and work hard, with no direct “reward” in sight, good things start to happen.   

The truly creative person can not resist the creative process.  If their creative pursuits are not actively pursued, expressed, or released, they become toxic inside them.  They must be dealt with.  They must!  Or they slowly start to die.  And kill us in the process.      

But to what extent can those creative pursuits become self-sustaining economic vehicles?  Enough to live on?  To feed our families?  And, if we could actually pull that off, would doing so necessarily taint our creativity and diminish the whole point and ultimate return of our pursuit?

This is something artists unavoidably struggle to make sense of.  We even have a romantic but unfair stereotype that all artists suffer (and must) financially.  They live on little to nothing.  That have no fall back.  They literally find themselves completely broke and have to create to survive.

But even in the kindest way of looking at that, they are still working for hire.  They are, if you must, “selling out.”  They are creating to get paid.  They are using their art to make money.

But why is it wrong (or necessarily tainted) for a starving artist to create a painting to buy groceries?  Shouldn’t someone get paid for doing something of value? Seems simple enough. But perhaps the Muse actually does require some form of starving (or at least subsistence) from her artists.

Either way, the tensions of art and a free market are real. Perhaps the tensions are part of living an inspired life.  Perhaps they don’t go away.  Perhaps they shouldn’t.

Well-funded or not, create what you can.  Don’t ever let money be an excuse.  Go!  Even now.  Go!  Do what you can.  Quit doing what you can’t!