Circa 2007. I’m teaching high school full time but can’t quite seem to shake my art. I have this compulsion to create. I’ve crammed easels and relatively toxic solvents into my various New Orleans apartments, the landlords of which did not return my deposits due to paint stains on the carpet.
So I get this idea. This crazy idea. I’ve been painting since 2002. I haven’t stopped yet. Why not, I thought. Why not, maybe, possibly, perhaps, become an artist?
Now let me give this thought the full radical outlandishness it deserves in circa 2007: In all my college art courses, the closest anyone had come to presenting art as career worthy was a professor who said artists are usually terrible at marketing themselves. And back then I didn’t care. I just wanted to paint, which is what I thought the true artist should want. Only the artist corrupted by capitalism and greed would want anything else.
When I got the bright idea to be an artist, it was of the only variety I could actually conceive of being: on the side, part-time. As in, not for real. As in, I won’t give myself the opportunity to really fail. As in, I won’t ever really succeed. But even part-time was radical for me circa 2007.
I put very little into the idea. I continued to paint. I did two outdoor art markets in Covington, Louisiana in the summer. I bought a big white tent from SAMS, hauled it out there in the oppressive heat, hung up my so-so paintings and attached stickers with completely arbitrary prices. I proceeded to quietly sweat in the corner of my tent while avoiding eye contact with anyone who dared enter. Occasionally, I’d eek out a “hi.” When I sold not a single painting at the first go, I thought surely it was a fluke (because clearly my art spoke for itself, plus in college I’d received the fine arts award for being the most promising student in my department). So I did the same market again with the same results: a day of work and literal sweat and not even one cent to show for it. I was negative one hundred bucks for the booth fees.
During this time, I also dabbled in poetry. My worst poem to date was entitled “Ugly Stripper,” and was written on the evening after my first art market catastrophe. Although I take myself far less seriously than I did circa 2007, I cannot in good conscience share the verses of that poem with you. And I really don’t need to. The title says it all. I felt on display in the worst kind of way-- completely vulnerable and, well, ugly. Rejected.
You can justify anything. Like an ended-too-soon relationship, my art business became an it’s not me, it’s them kind of thing. They just don’t appreciate real art (women). They just want local paintings like shotgun houses (big boobs), fleur-de-lis (tiny waists) and oysters (insert any other superficial quality).
The problem with my rationalizations was that my art wasn’t exactly pushing any boundaries or taking any risks. And it wasn’t really that bad either. The problem was me.
I’d invested copious amounts of energy in my paintings as my identity and almost none in 1. becoming better at painting and 2. promoting my work.
Letting 30 or so people from a small town take a peek at my paintings is hardly an audience. It’s like believing something represents the inner workings of your soul and then flashing it to a handful of strangers in the street before quickly covering up again and agonizing that no one liked what you offered. Stripper or streaker, both analogies seem to work.
Needless to say, I stayed away from art festivals and markets for a while. I kept making art. Not regularly or with discipline but enough so that I still had paintings in stacks against the walls in my bedroom.
It could have gone on like that. I could very well still be doing that.
The truth was I didn’t really need art. I had a good job. I had money. I had friends. Art was just the thing that made me a little bit cool when chatting with new friends at a bar.
And then I needed it. I really, really needed it.
My life became less manageable: I’d given up my teaching job, given birth to a beautiful baby boy, and out of what seemed nowhere became a single, jobless, parent.
I used art to navigate that time. I made it daily because making marks on paper gave me a sense of control in a world that ceased to have any. It also gave me power: I made this. I can do that. Like praying the rosary, painting and drawing gave me something to do with my hands while I quieted my mind from all my worldly concerns: how to get the baby to sleep at night, how to pay the creditors who kept calling, how to drive my car without wetting the steering wheel with my tears.
Going back to teaching was far fetched since by the time I paid for childcare my salary would be laughable. I was a good teacher, but other than the subjects I taught (art and writing) I had no real skills.
So it was work at the Bra Genie (stripper theme vaguely reemerges) because they sent out an email looking for a “talented sales associate” or, for the first time in my life, really allow the thing I was good at to be the thing I did professionally-- now there is a radical idea!
It wasn’t and still isn’t easy. I didn’t wake up and start selling paintings on the regular. But I did wake up and start painting. Like it was my job.
And I read art blogs, watched youtube videos, and listened to podcasts like it was my job. Instead of no one does this, it became, how does one do this? I must learn.
Do you know what happened?
Thanks to the world wide web, more people see my work now than ever before. And here’s the best part: I don’t even remotely feel like a stripper. I feel like a person. One who happens to make a lot of art.
In his book The War of Art (which I can’t seem to avoid referencing in any of my blog posts) writer Steven Pressfield talks about what happens when an artist of any kind decides to “go pro”. He’s got a list of things that happen, but I’ll share number 7:
“We do not over identify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, over identifies with his avocations, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and over terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.”
Sharing oneself through art or otherwise is a vulnerable act. For me, it hasn’t become less so. But the vulnerability is no longer the kind that comes from exposing oneself to predators. It’s the kind that is willing to share instead of bury its talents so that they may do some good however noble or modest.
My paintings are still personal, but they aren’t representations of my worth. I am a person who is creating them. Daily. No one body of work can stand for me. “Art” isn’t quite as material as it once was and thus is harder to scoff at. Art is something I do and think about. It’s what I’m good at, and it’s how I pay the bills. I don’t really care if someone doesn’t like it. It doesn’t exist solely for other people. It has a value of its own. And it is precisely that value that I hope, somehow, connects with other people.
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