Feelings About Art - Tumblr Posts

I’ve been thinking a lot about art and success and the way that we’re trained, in a way, to be insecure about our inadequacies. There’s very much this idea that if you’re not on your way to becoming the great leading artistic visionary of our era, you’re wasting your time. I would like to say I’m above this line of thinking, but I’m really not. I have insecurities and frustrations and annual artistic crises-of-faith at a pace of what seems like twice or thrice a year. 

But, I don’t think that artistic success is a make-it-or-break-it proposition. Doing well enough can be a form of success. I’m not exhibiting work on an international scale (although I’d like to be), and it feels like I’m laboring in obscurity a lot of the time, but I’m actually working in my industry (as an arts professor) and I have my own studio. 

I’m not solving world hunger and I don’t live in a Japanese RPG world where there can be only one chosen one. I’m making objects of aesthetic intrigue. I’m not where I want to be at the moment, but I can be patient and keep working away, and if I never quite get there, is it really the end of the world?