The Tireless Pursuit of a Perfect Fit
Ever feel like you have to exhaust ALL of your options before settling on one thing? Like you have to literally try all the things before you can make a decision? Spin yourself in circles making all of the wrong choices in order to feel confident in making the right one?
Sound like you? Sounds like me, too. Isn’t it tiresome?
That’s how I have felt with my art over the last year or so. Maybe less. I decided to pursue abstract art exclusively in the fall of 2022, so last year as of this blog post. I never felt more in alignment with painting and making art than with abstract art. I fell in love with the myriad of possibilities of combinations of shape, line, color, etc. I found my niche! Until I discovered that there are about a million and one ways to create abstract art, aaaaand I got lost again.
When I released my first collection this past spring, I felt as if I had a good grip on what I wanted my aesthetic to look like. I felt good about it! But this big, bad thing called social media.. well, it always has other plans for us. It comes for us in the form of comparison. It’s so easy to scroll through your feed, see seasoned professionals way ahead of you in their skillset, and begin to feel less than up to par. Then sets in discouragement and despair. If you’ve ever experienced this, you know exactly what I mean. And I am sending you the biggest virtual hug, because it SUCKS.
This summer, I have allowed myself to explore and experiment, but I think that I kind of let that intermingle too much with doom scroll comparison. I tried making art in many different ways until I really didn’t even know where to start anymore. I wasn’t sure what my process looked like, and felt myself getting more and more lost. I would make something that I liked here and there, but for the most part, I didn’t even know what I was doing. For probably the entire month of July, I felt discouraged, and felt like I was not only making no progress, but actually going backwards. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? Where is my voice? When emotions ran high one night, I deactivated my Instagram account.
Can I be honest with you? It felt good.
It felt nice to release expectation to post, update, create a collection of work, and everything else in between that puts the pressure on. I felt like I could paint whatever I wanted, and let go of unrealistic expectations. I’ve barely painted abstracts for a year. LESS THAN A YEAR. And here I am expecting to be a pro that sells out within the first hour of a release? Get real, Michelle.
It’s so easy for us to become impatient. I think that technology has given us such a sense of instant gratification in so many areas that it inevitably trickles into all areas of our lives. Including thinking that we should be an overnight sensation and go viral at the drop of a hat. I listened to a podcast this morning that covered the topic of diligence, and man, did it hit home. It essentially stated that we can’t get where we’re going without enduring the hard parts first. We HAVE to go through the hard parts, and we NEED the hard parts to appreciate the good. Isn’t that so true? Not only that, but when we niche down, we have to expect that not everyone will like what we do, and they’re not supposed to. That’s the beauty of having an ideal client/collector. People that connect with your work will love it. People who don’t won’t.
This doesn’t just apply to art. It applies to all areas of creativity. I had to learn this through doing photography, too, and it is all 100% applicable. It may look different in other fields, but I promise, it all applies the same.
Right now, I am working to get back in touch with my own voice and process of creating. I’m taking breaks from social media, and doing my absolute best to steer clear of comparison. Just staying in my lane, and putting paint on my brush. I don’t know when my next release will be, and I’m not in a hurry. I am excited to see what is born from this time spent with me, myself, and I. Maybe something beautiful will be on the other side. <3