Lately, I have contemplating about being an artist.What is an artist? Am I an artist? Do I have a voice? Is is being heard? I have a lot of questions that I am working through.
When I started drawing in high school, I was not the best. I enjoyed the challenge of creating and sketched daily. I didn't have anyone telling me what I was doing was wrong. That my figures weren't proportional, my lines weren't straight, my shading was on the wrong sides, but I felt like an artist... I loved my work.
Until, I started showing others my artwork. Adults... Grownups... I got responses like, "That's nice but....." "Have you seen (enter another artist's name here) work? They are so talented. "
All I could do was to mumble, thanks... This is when self doubt crept in.
Self doubt stayed with me through college as I tried to understand my art classes and what my teachers were instructing me to do. I loathed being criticized by my classmates and teachers. I barely got through art school. In my fashion design classes my fashion drawings were never skinny enough, never sexy enough, never bold enough. I could never get a handle on gouache. I hated figure drawing. I tried to make my teachers happy so I could just pass the class and graduate.
Self doubt hung around until I had a break through as an 30 year adult in graduate school. I got to a point where I learned to take criticism. I had to, I was in a career where criticism happened a lot. I learned to dissect peoples words. I learned to find my own voice through the many other voices. I learned to stand and stop letting others define who I was... as an artist.. as a fashion designer.. as a human.
I did so much better in graduate school. I believed in myself. There was still heavy criticism in my classes but I could take it now. I could also say, I don't agree... or thank you I will take that into consideration. I could go home and breathe better. I still wasn't the best and wasn't highly favored but I didn't care. I came to an understanding that everyone has opinions but that doesn't mean that they are right.
Right now, I am venturing out as an artist, creating paper cuts and silhouettes. An art form that I didn't learn in school, an art form where I am self taught. Right now, I own my own business. I am self taught in this also. I am coming to grips with the questions in my mind. I am learning to answer them in my own time while remembering not to participate in self doubt.
Self doubt will destroy all that you work for, it will cripple you and weaken you. I've got to much too do and too much to say for this to happen.
I have to keep on being... being an artist, being me.
How do you get past self doubt as an artist?
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