You’re the Hero of Your Own Art Story

Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Savvy Painter Podcast. I am your host, Antrese Wood, and if you've been listening for a while, welcome back. If you're new here, I'm so glad you found the Savvy Painter Podcast. It is the podcast for artists who want practical, tactical tips to create a meaningful art practice that is both fulfilling and supports you.

In the last episode of the podcast, I kind of joked around a bit about the idea of the art police, these imaginary enforcers who supposedly show up the second that we make a wrong move. Hopefully, we've realized how silly that fear is. I'm sure it's kinda obvious when I talk about it in the sense of this art police who bust into your studio to take you out when you don't do “something right”.

But the thing is that that shows up constantly in the way that we talk about our work and in the things that we do in our studio. Just think of all the times you find yourself even thinking or saying out loud, “I should do it this way, or I want to do it that way, but I can't because…” “but I don't know if it's okay,” “I can't because of X, Y, or Z, or I just don't know if it's okay,” all of that has the undertone of this art police.

Personally, I just think it's really funny to actually make them into a character and it just becomes so ridiculous that you cannot take it seriously. Now that we know that there's no one out there holding us back, we also have to acknowledge that no one is coming to rescue us either. There's no artist fairy godmother who appears with a magic brush or a gallery contract.

If that feels a little bit intimidating, I know, I get it. It feels like a lot when you're in your studio by yourself creating day after day and it's just you and your canvas. There's not really anyone to bounce ideas off of or to ask what they think or to just get a reality check. That's the life that we've signed up for as painters, as artists.

Because of that, it's really easy to fall into this thinking that it is not something that you're able to do or that you don't know what to do or that it's all just so much and so overwhelming. So I thought what I would talk about today is both the responsibilities that we have, this idea that nobody is coming to save you. I really wish that that were true. I really wish that there was a fairy godmother or somebody who would come down and just wave a magic wand and make everything exactly the way we want it to be.

But as far as I know, that's not typically what happens. So if you want your art career, your art practice to be the thing that you dream of, then it's up to you to build that, to create it, to make it. I'm here to tell you that you can do this. You absolutely can do this. You have this calling to create art, and this calling comes with challenges in the form of your fears, your doubts, and no guaranteed outcomes.

But you can definitely stack the odds in your favor, and in doing so, you give yourself the chance to create that practice that you want to create. In the process of doing that, you also will transform yourself.

Let's start with how do you stack the deck in your favor? You stack the deck in your favor by recognizing that you are the hero of your own story. I bet you don't see yourself that way. I know for sure that I didn't. For a long, long time, I had this belief that life happens and there was very little that I could do about it. I had this idea that I had to fight really, really hard to be an artist and that I could only react to what was happening around me.

I always wondered why I was exhausted all of the time. It really felt like I had no control over my life. But then I took a step back and I realized that what I was actually doing was trying to control or manage everything around me, except for myself. I was trying to control all of the things that I had no control over. I mean, no wonder I was so exhausted. The thing was, I didn't even realize that I was doing this. You know what I mean? If I wasn't outright trying to change or influence these things, I was obsessing over them.

If I wasn't trying to move things into my own direction or change or influence these things, then what I was doing was I was incessantly thinking about why those things should change, why they should be different than they were, why things really should not be so difficult and they really should be the way that I thought they would be better, which namely would be I make art in my studio and people find it and they buy it and it's just so easy and so fun and the hardest thing I do all day is figure out what to paint and figure out what colors to put where and what shapes to put where and all of those things that as artists, I don't know about you, but I love obsessing about.

What ended up happening was by trying to shift things that I wasn't capable of shifting, namely things that were not in my control, I was giving my brain an impossible puzzle to solve. Here's the thing with our brains. When we tell it that something is important and that there is something wrong with that important thing, you know what our brain does? Our brain just goes, "Okay, Roger that," and then it directs an enormous amount of energy towards trying to solve the unsolvable.

There I was, wondering why I felt so exhausted, overwhelmed, and burnt out all of the time. Once I realized this and I realized how much energy could be available to me, I shifted my focus and I started asking better questions. Questions like what are the things that absolutely light me up and how can I create more of those? How can I love this amazing artist self of mine? How can I create more days that are filled with the experiences and moments that I love?

Now the thing is asking myself questions like that, A, it puts me into a place where I start thinking about what is it that I want? What do I want to create? How do I want my everyday life to be? How do I envision my “perfect day”? What exactly does that look like? What time do I wake up? What do I do? How long is my breakfast? I am a long, luxurious morning person. I mean, I do jump out of bed. I don't sit in bed.

When I wake up, I immediately get out of bed. I'm not a person who lounges in bed. But where I do lounge is when I have my cup of coffee and my second cup of coffee and oftentimes my third cup of coffee. I am just so slow, and I'm thoughtful, and I'm just easing into the day. That is a perfect start of a morning for me, personally.

Then there are all these other little things that I like to get done, and then I start to ease into my work day. For me, a perfect day has that sense of ease in the morning. Here's the thing, I don't know what your perfect day is. Pretty sure it's going to be different though. Whatever that perfect day is for you, I want you to really think about what that is like and include in that how much work you're getting done and I mean, how much painting you're getting done, how much time you're spending on the other pieces of your art practice.

Because here's the thing, there is the perfect fantasy day and then there is the perfect day that creates the results that you want. If some of the results that you want include getting shows and includes showing your work and includes selling your work, then a certain amount of your day needs to be focused on achieving those results because they just don't happen.

If you don't have those results in your art practice yet, it's highly likely, from what I've seen, that you haven't really dedicated much time to it. The results that we have in our studio, in our art practice are directly proportional to the actions that we take in order to achieve that. Again, it's great news that the art police are not coming to get you, but also nobody, and I mean nobody is coming to save you either.

Nobody is coming to just hand you things on a silver platter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I'm pretty sure you already knew. That's why I like envisioning what my perfect day is like because that gives me an idea of how I like to work.

I think it's also very, very helpful to start to really think about and envision what are the results that you want in your studio and be very, very specific about it. Don't just say, “I want to paint and I want to sell my work.” How many paintings do you want to get done in a year? How many paintings do you want to sell in a year?

Again, be very discerning about the difference between the fantasy of it and the reality of it, because the flippant response is usually like, “I want to paint as much as I can, and I want to sell as much as I can, duh.”

But knowing that the paintings themselves are the result of the work that you put into your studio and the sales that you make are the results of the efforts that you put into showing people your work, asking them if they want to buy it, communicating all of these different things, and you still have a life outside of your studio that is also important, it's really helpful to be very, very specific about what it is you want, what results you want, knowing and understanding your responsibility for creating those results.

When I started asking myself better questions about what it is that I wanted, how can I create more of the things that light me up? How can I love the amazing artist self of mine? That's me. How can I love myself, the artist? How can I create more days that are filled with the experiences and moments that I love? Now, really answer those questions, really think about questions like that, like what does that mean?

You're likely to come up with more questions on your own, but just start thinking about it in more specific terms. What are the things that light you up? I know, of course, it's your painting and you can start to really dive into what exactly it is about your painting that you love and that's going to help you a lot with where you direct your attention in terms of what it is that you're creating and the type of work that you're creating, etc., etc., but in addition to that, the things that I absolutely love as an example is I really love the feeling of being financially stable.

I really love the feeling of knowing that my things are taken care of, that I am safe in my home, all these different things. That there's not this heavy, heavy stress. When I think about that and I think about how can I create that, then of course, I'm going to start thinking about, “How am I going to create a practice that is both fulfilling and sustains me? What exactly does that look like for me?”

It's different for every single one of us. There are of course similarities, but it's going to be different. This is where I think it's really important for you to really dig into that and answer those questions for yourself. Because once you do that, you have your North Star. Now you can direct your brain and all of that energy towards something that is really valuable for you.

Okay, so just to clearly connect the dots, we're going to take all of the energy that you had been spending on worrying about the art police and worrying about all of those other things and we're going to direct it onto the things that you actually want.

The beautiful, sometimes intimidating truth is that you have all the power to decide what you want to create and how you'll share it with the world. If that's overwhelming at first, I absolutely understand. We have been programmed to believe that we don't have all this power, that we are not capable of doing these things, that artists are going to suffer, that they are going to be helpless, that they are going to be dependent on all these things outside of themselves.

They're dependent on having a degree, they're dependent on grants, they're dependent on these mysterious collectors showing up at their doorstep. Just notice how all of that creates the scenario where you are helpless. We're completely focusing the attention on where you do have agency, where you do have power, where you are able to influence and change things. That's sometimes a wake-up call.

It's sometimes a little bit scary when we're used to thinking that we have no control, and now we are being asked to take responsibility and step up. It's easier to stay frustrated and helpless because we're handcuffed by the imaginary art police or because Facebook algorithms constantly change and you're under the delusion that you need to be a content creator who constantly spits out work in order to be relevant on social media.

This is why it's so important to know what you want, to know what your perfect days are. I'm going to guess that your perfect days don't include creating work for the sole purpose of getting people to watch longer or stay longer on somebody else's platform. When you don't know what you want, you end up playing somebody else's game and in that case, what you're doing is you are playing Zuckerberg's game.

He's done a really good job of training you to believe that the content that you create is for you when really it's just keeping people on social media longer, which makes his advertising more profitable. Ouch.

Here's the important thing. I'm going to go off on a little side tangent here hopefully for just a quick second because I'm feeling this, I'm also experiencing this. Social media is changing. It's getting harder and harder to see the posts that you want to see and to interact with the people that you want to interact with because most of the time, Facebook or Instagram is just not showing it to you.

That's one thing. Another thing is that in this period of our life people are very divided and social media comments in particular are becoming extremely toxic and depressing and there are tons and tons of data to support that. Social media companies have thousands of incredibly educated, super-smart people who are using their knowledge to create more profits for their company.

That's their job. That's what they do. They're very, very good at it. You need to be aware of that. Again, with this idea, “Don't try to change things that you cannot change,” understand that social media exists to make those companies profits, money, et cetera, et cetera, and they are going to figure out lots and lots of new ways to do that.

The ways that they figure out how to do that, the ways that they create profit, will often go against what you need or want in order to run your art practice. The difficult truth is the more time that artists spend getting upset, directing their energy at how social media should be, what Mark Zuckerberg should be doing, and what they think should happen, and being upset about how much content that you have created and how that has helped him, and so now he owes you, all of that energy just goes out into the void and it makes you feel like crap.

I get it, trust me, I get it, but those companies don't exist for creators. They exist for their shareholders. Period. End of story. I totally 100% get the frustration with it. However, it's not helping you. What does help you is looking at where is social media right now? What is my reach on Facebook? What is my actual reach on Instagram? How can I use that to my advantage?

Here's the thing, there may be other options for you that are far more effective than Facebook and Instagram, but as long as you—and I'm just using Facebook and Instagram as the most obvious example—but as long as you are focusing your attention on what they should be doing, etc., you are not seeing any other options.

You're spending a lot of energy on something that you have zero influence over. It's exhausting and it's taking you away from what you can do, it’s taking you away from the most important work, which is your painting, your creativity. Your job is to keep your eye on the ball. The ball is your answers to those questions that we were talking about before.

The ball for you is, “What do I want with my practice? What are the results that I want for me in my studio? What are the results that I want for me in my life and how does my art practice contribute to that or vice versa?” Get really clear on those answers. You are the only person that can decide that.

Once you are clear on that, then you will be able to see things so much more clearly. When you don't know what you want for yourself, when you don't have your own goals, when you are not clear, you become a part of somebody else's goals. It's so much easier for you to become susceptible to falling into this trap of the idea that the likes are what validate your work.

When there's an invisible, constantly changing algorithm working against people seeing your work and giving you those likes, you're setting yourself up for a lot of pain and suffering that is absolutely unnecessary. No goals and no clarity means that you end up having no boundaries because you don't know where you stand, you don't know where you are, and you don't know where you're going.

No boundaries are like being on a boat without a sail or a rudder in the middle of the ocean. Find your North Star and start guiding your boat towards it. Listen, I said earlier that you have to be the hero of your own story. The heroes aren't fearless. They feel the fear, but they take action anyway.

You don't need anyone else to give you permission. You can give yourself permission to start taking action. Another thing—and I really, really want you to hear me on this so pay attention. If you're multitasking, just hold up for a second and really hear me—you do not have to have all of the answers in order to start.

You find the answers as you move forward by trying things out, by finding what you like, and finding what you don't like. You might answer those questions and you might get a really good idea of what it is that you actually want and then you might start to think about what will be your next best step to get there and you might take that step and you might realize that, “Oh, okay, this isn't going to get me there so what's another step that I can take?”

We don't have a crystal ball that's going to tell us precisely how to get there. We can only make decisions and then trust ourselves and take action towards those decisions, towards those goals. What this requires of you is to really embrace the responsibility that you are in charge of your own art practice, and you get to design it, you get to create it, you get to make it really personal and very specific to what you like, what lights you up, what excites you.

When you embrace this responsibility, one part of it is no more excuses, no more blame. Outside circumstances definitely matter, timing, market conditions, personal obligations, and other people's agendas, but ultimately you get to choose how you respond to them.

How you respond to them can, in large part, be dictated by what it is that you want. That's always going to be the first decision is really diggin into specifically what it is that you want. Blaming the world or waiting for someone else to fix things isn't serving you.

Yes, you do have to step out of your comfort zone. The part of your mind that invented the art police in the first place wanted to keep you safe from discomfort and failure, but growth, skills, and artistry are forged in those uncomfortable spaces. You grow when you strategically nudge yourself out of your comfort zone.

I don't want you to jump off of a cliff, but just push the boundaries a little bit, see what you're capable of, and then come back into your comfort zone and refresh yourself, and then push the boundaries again. The actions that you take create the results that are in your studio.

If you want to improve your technique, guess who needs to practice? You do. If you want more exposure, guess who needs to promote your work? You do. If you want to sell your art, guess who needs to reach out, apply to shows, or build connections? That's you too.

It does require you to take absolute responsibility for your art practice. When you do that, you are empowered because you're no longer waiting around, hoping somebody is going to come in and fix or change things so that you can just be in your studio and paint and things just magically happen.

Magic does happen, just not that way. Now, if you've been a part of the Savvy Painter community for a while or if you're in Growth Studio, you probably know that what I will advocate for you is to look for the next smallest step that you can take. That's even with what we're discussing here.

You don't have to have everything figured out all in one go. You can just look at next week and think about what would be ideal for me next week. Let me just try that on and see what that's like in as many ways as I can. What are the things that I can adjust or shift so that I am one step closer to that ideal week?

Then at the end of the week, you can look back and say, “Okay, what worked? What didn't work? What do I want to do more of? What do I want to stop doing?” Just make tiny adjustments and then go into the next week and try those out and see how they feel, see how that works for you. Constantly trying things out, assessing what worked, what didn't, what you want to start doing, what you want to stop doing, and then shifting slightly where you need to and going at it again.

Small, sustainable steps make a huge impact. Then the other thing that I would suggest is to find a group or a program, maybe it's Growth Studio, maybe it's something else, but something that offers you support and keeps you moving forward. In Growth Studio, we don't do the work for you, but we do provide the environment, the support, and the encouragement so that you can find that hero inside of you.

It's this amazing space where you can commit to your goals, learn new strategies, and push through those tough moments. If Growth Studio is for you, I would love to see you inside. I've seen members come in feeling stuck waiting for permission, and then after a few months, they're submitting to shows and posting their work online and building their confidence.

It's just an amazing place. That's my little plug for Growth Studio. But regardless, definitely find a community where you can hold yourself accountable and where you get the support that you need. Because even though nobody can save you, community does inspire and motivate and hold you accountable and just help you feel and help you see that you are not alone.

If Growth Studio isn't your thing, there's always the Savvy Painter community. It's a wonderful place. That's an option that's available to you or you might reach out to a couple of artists that you know and say, "Hey, listen to this podcast episode. Let's work on this together and be each other's accountability partners."

Decide what you want and take small baby steps towards it. When you do that, there's a bonus. The side effect of taking those small baby steps is that you will be building a lot of confidence in understanding yourself and what you want for your art practice.

You will be building trust in yourself and learning the baby steps of having your own back. Confidence is not a prerequisite for anything that I've laid out here. It's the result of taking action and assessing. The more you step up, the less scary it feels. If any part of this feels scary, then just break it down into a smaller step.

I know this might feel like a lot of responsibility and in some ways it is, but it's also liberation. You're free to choose, you're free to try, you're free to fail and learn and succeed. I hope you go for it. Okay, so I think that's enough for today. Have an amazing week and I will talk to you soon.

If you want to take what you are learning here on the Savvy Painter Podcast even further, join us in Growth Studio. Growth Studio is a unique community of artists. We meet multiple times a week for live coaching, critiques, and demos. Just go to savvypainter.com/join.