The artist's mind
Colorado is home for many athletes.
I heard today in the supermarket talks about people’s friends who are flying to China this week for their scheduled competition in the Olympics.
In the newspaper I read an article about the athletes’ mind.
I reflected how similar it is to the artist’s mind.
How much perseverance is needed to make a life in the arts, how much courage and endurance it demands.
Everybody knows that in order to become a top athlete, you must make huge sacrifices, practice daily for long hours, watch your diet and constantly self motivate.
People tends to think of artists as if they have an never ending childhood, playing with paints in their studio, safe from the world’s harsh realities, unaware of the nature of real “hard work” and “social compromises” required by the general marketplace.
The truth is quite different.
To make a life in the arts is one of the most challenging disciplinary life you could have.
You face constant criticism if not from without, then from within.
You constantly striving to express yourself through a medium that is vague and open to interpretations.
You face mountains of rejections, cold shoulders or simply being ignored by the world at large.
If you become very popular, you attract criticism as being a “sale out” and if nobody understands or likes your art, you may get positive writing in art magazine but you’ll starve.
The artists that persevere the test of time and stay with their medium for a lifetime, being an artist is really not a choice, it is more like an obsession or a compulsion.
I heard today in the supermarket talks about people’s friends who are flying to China this week for their scheduled competition in the Olympics.
In the newspaper I read an article about the athletes’ mind.
I reflected how similar it is to the artist’s mind.
How much perseverance is needed to make a life in the arts, how much courage and endurance it demands.
Everybody knows that in order to become a top athlete, you must make huge sacrifices, practice daily for long hours, watch your diet and constantly self motivate.
People tends to think of artists as if they have an never ending childhood, playing with paints in their studio, safe from the world’s harsh realities, unaware of the nature of real “hard work” and “social compromises” required by the general marketplace.
The truth is quite different.
To make a life in the arts is one of the most challenging disciplinary life you could have.
You face constant criticism if not from without, then from within.
You constantly striving to express yourself through a medium that is vague and open to interpretations.
You face mountains of rejections, cold shoulders or simply being ignored by the world at large.
If you become very popular, you attract criticism as being a “sale out” and if nobody understands or likes your art, you may get positive writing in art magazine but you’ll starve.
The artists that persevere the test of time and stay with their medium for a lifetime, being an artist is really not a choice, it is more like an obsession or a compulsion.
