Originally posted on 05-26-2014
Here it goes. I’m going to admit for all the world the most embarrassing thing a painter can ever say: I have not been in my studio for about two months. I know! It is shameful. I am ashamed. But what does one do?! Life gets in the way. Work gets in the way. Lack of motivation gets in the way. So where does this leave me….
I have no idea.
Part of me thinks that everyone goes through this,”painter’s block,” but no one likes to talk about it. It is unacceptable for anything less than twelve hours a day in the studio. But really? Does that actually happen for normal peons such as myself? When I’m not trying to support myself, I’m too busy stressing about supporting myself. I’m tired from my two jobs that do not pay the bills. And on top of that, I’m stressing even more about the fact that I’m not painting! But that doesn’t help to motivate me. So I fall deeper down the rabbit hole of despair.
In graduate school, it was so easy to motivate. Even weekends were spent getting up early and spending the entire day in the studio. Laundry could wait. Grocery shopping could wait. Life was put on hold as the paint flowed onto the canvas as easy as breath entering and exiting the lungs. But not anymore. Which leads me to the second worst thing I could possibly admit out loud (or on paper): Am I really a painter?
More shame.
The thought crumbles the entire basis that I have so-far built my life around, me being an artist. If I’m not, it has all been in vain: college, graduate school, not following a more lucrative major, working retail and any job that popped up to support my “actual career” that is suppose to be a fine artist. Am I just another lackey working a job that I am currently overqualified for with a BA and MFA? The answer to that scares me.
Do I need to make art anymore? Is it a fantasy of a child who doesn’t understand how the real world works? Even my idea of supporting myself by teaching, does it follow the old saying: “Those who can’t teach.” I can’t even get a job doing that! The world is full of people like me with their heads in the clouds and their wallets empty at the beginning of every month.
I don’t really have a conclusion to this rant. In the end, I just hope that this too will pass. I hope it hasn’t all been for naught, and that tomorrow, I shall come home from my non-art related job, saunter into the studio, and pick up a paintbrush and put it to canvas. Until then, I will continue to fret.