I looked on the internet and there are no answers for my particular question. Should I give up on my art career? I have no energy to spend time working on selling my art and waiting while doing it and a job. It’s a dead end. I sold some drawings in 2019 because they were all part of one series. Since then I have sold one painting for a low price to my”great aunt” who is near my age so more like a sister in law. Anyway, she loved the pandemic art, that painting of a person stuck in a Hand Sanitizer bottle.
That has now become a metaphor for my life. I could make more art and I do, but I like it less and less. I’m used to making art I don’t like.
The problem is I’m a profesisional artist, not an “emerging” one, ie. I emerged about 32 years ago and have been making art ever since on a regular basis at times daily at times not as much but most of the time doing something whether drawing painting mixed media etc.
I’m not 25 with stars in my eyes. I probably was in an online group show recently. I can’t remember. Nobody goes to my pieces so it’s pointless. Making art is pointless. Showing it in a vacuum to nobody is a dead end. So is Instagram.
I’m burnt out on “selling” my art and trying to get galleries or whatever. I think at some point in the last ten years I just surrendered to the fact that searching for group shows in unimportant galleries doesn’t even work. I submit work that isn’t chosen.
I’m not being negative. I just am completely unsuccessful and would basically be homeless if I relied on living off my artist career. Some have told me it’s not a career if I’m not showing and making sales. I looked up the definition of carrier which said something about expertise, spending time on a thing and improving or something. Yes it’s a career but it’s a failed one. You can’t tell me that I should focus on the art making and my passion for making art because I’ve fucking done that my entire life. I do make art for me first. I do engage in the process often without focusing on the product or focusing somewhat on the product or fully. I don’t have a lack of any to that. Being an artist is part of who I am now.
I used to think the studio was the thing. I’ve had studios from the beginning. Many artists haven’t been so lucky but have been hugely successful.
Perhaps I did give up on part of my artist career long ago. Choosing art therapy as my means of income is choosing a second choice. I could stop that altogether. I could stop working as an art therapist. It wouldn’t be a good idea financially and maybe I’m wrong and being a wounded healer is meaning full so I’d miss it. Maybe it helps me make better art.
At some point in your life it is too late for things. People naively say you can do whatever your passion is but it’s bullshit. Everything in life has its limits and dead ends. Death is the ultimate one of course.
Anyway I’m thinking about all this in terms of giving up my studio, at least my separate studio. I did it and managed in the pandemic. It was claustrophobic working in a tiny space, a former closet, but I made stuff and did art therapy with people.
I don’t need the studio. Nobody comes to look at my work for a show or sale. A few people come for their sessions in person. It’s good but is this art studio just a big unnecessary expense or is it the one thing left I’m hanging on to as my “Room of My own”, my separate place where I have all my materials, space, my work. I’m grateful that only 9/11/01 and CoVid have gotten in the way of me working at my studio but even then I had the studio waiting for me.
I want this studio. Many reasons. But you can’t always get what you want. It’s fucking true most of the time in life. You can’t. You get somethings and not others. Like success and financial success through art.
6 Impossible Things For Breakfast 