Sunday, December 16, 2012

Exploring The Journey Of An Artist

By Annie Horkan


For several days now, I have been musing over my life as an artist. I presume it is a cumulative response to a succession of recent trials. But if I am very upfront, I have been interrogating this curious path from the inception. The unorthodox direction of an artist is acknowledged for its own unique set of burdens as characterized by the "starving artist." Art history is pierced with the bitter stories of proficient artists who never sold a single piece of art until after they were deceased. In my heart, I presuppose so much of this scenario stemmed from the masses not apprehending the chosen path of artists.

The frequent response even presently of non-artists towards artists is often tangled, enveloping both a welcome curiosity combined with projections of unspoken uncertainty. For instance, whenever I meet someone new, and I reciprocate to the general question of what I do with being an artist, I always receive a smile with the remark, "How nice." But then comes the reticent gaze that wants to transfix my soul, and derive the actual impression of what my work as an artist is all about. There is a prompt sensitivity for me, as the artist, that I am moving to a disparate drum. There is both tribute and surmise in those reserved glares. The pretense is largely OK with me since I find myself sometimes questioning my own direction. But when the pretense becomes mockery, I take objection. I was in love with a man whom I honestly deemed had reverence for my path as an artist. After we split, I understood through the grapevine he had notified friends how I employed all day in the studio finger painting. Artists, for better or worse, are ready to tread the razor's edge.

One of the trials for artists is the need to also appear as a business person. Artists are called upon to become multi-dimensional, traversing both the theoretical and the tangible worlds. Their obligation is by no means constrained to the art studio. If their artwork is to win its passage into the global community on the other side of the studio, they must excel in the demands of business. Every artist imagines being brokered by the most well known gallery, or even better, discovering a Patron for their artwork. But umpteen artists I know, myself noted, mount lousy betrayals of gallery representation, and the Patron persists in being fleeting. For an artist to appear as a business personality is imploring a fully prevalent right brained human being to discipline their less prevalent left brain to engage with a fair magnitude of professional capacity in order to endure. Many artists graduate from art school with zero understanding of business. They experience the responsibilities beyond the studio of putting together portfolios, developing inventory, pricing, framing, marketing staples and uncovering how to render themselves and their artwork. At this time, artists need a world wide web existence which they must learn how to produce or hire if they can arrange it. Then there is the endless maintenance of their web pages with programmed files, posting, shopping carts, newsletters, social media, traffic production and an abundance of concerns that belong to this other worldly zone of the web. If an artist has a try at all these vital chores in order to move their artwork, one might ponder when it is they by any means find the time to create their art. Most artists would embrace the creation of their artwork beyond their selling and marketing tasks, and chance starvation instead. I know this to be true. This is a quandary all artists eventually encounter as they navigate essential answers if they want to prevail.

The majority of artists continue on with a assurance to making their artwork regardless of all the required insistence for advocating, spreading and selling. They carry on because there is no looking back once the alchemical life force for interpretation has rooted in their souls. An artist's vow to their artwork is a vow to their own human evolution. All creations of art are a contemplation of this growth, and the longing illuminated in the artist spirit to witness and discern beyond the ordinary. No one concept can ever be an entirety, but simply a fragment for where the artist has been on their path. Art is born of inspiration, and the trail into inspiration is exclusive to the artist voyaging there. The alchemy of art is unrestrained, complex and beyond intellect. It is ruled by a life force akin to the Creator, and searches for the uncertainty of vast new spirit and expression. It is the magnificent practice of uncovering buried gems in a spot where nobody has risked to go. It is a spot that defies all conclusion with logic, yet prevails like a immense ocean overflowing with life. It takes courage to journey these unfathomed waters, spirit to depict what is discovered there. This is the domain of the artist, to which they circle back over and over again in the process of creation. Their deep reward is the undeniable, natural flowering of this experience. We can rely on their return, and therefore, each recent work of art includes the vow of even more to come.

It is stated that the happiest and most productive people on the planet are those who honor, assist and participate in the arts. This expresses volumes for the human passion to grow, and the bond of growth to art. I have ascertained more than a few times that the vocation of producing art is a luxury. Some artists might retort that reliable income of a nine to five, a real job, is convenience. I think the entire human race is inevitably on a course of individual flowering whether or not we are mindful of it or even desire it. Perhaps artists carry this spirited awareness and blazing desire, and adopt the creative way as the course to get them there. If a society endorses, honors and partakes in the arts, they endorse the experiences of creation as being a compelling path for themselves and the whole to evolve. With this in mind, we are all artists to the degree that art is the ensuing consequence of our progress and change. All life, every breath emerges as work of art.




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