One of my biggest aims with my art in recent years has been authenticity. I want everything I paint to be genuinely me- no cookie cutters, no imitation, no stock fantasy themes. Because I wanted to be unique. I wanted to stand out.
The thing is, if you exclude anything that's already been done before, you're not left with much of anything to work with. That's a simple fact that I still struggle with even now. It's that old Artist's Ego, that part of me that gets defensive if someone negatively critiques my work, the part of me that gives me a hot surge of anger when I see someone on Facebook has reposted one of my pictures with the watermark cropped out. In and of itself, it's not a bad thing. Self-respect is healthy. When you give it too much control, that's when things start to go to shit, and you start to fall apart because life just can't meet its demands.
This is something I know from firsthand experience, because it's basically been my life for the past three years. The perfectionist in me has left me drained, and I find myself searching for answers that it just can't provide.
Which brings me back to my initial goal: authenticity. It seems that somewhere along the way, I confused authenticity with originality. Although one sometimes accompanies the other, it's not necessarily always true. For the longest time, I thought that making art which was expressive of your truest self was automatically ace material. Now, I'm suspecting that's not always the way it is. Being yourself is not a guaranteed path to success.
So why bother, right? Well, I suspect that it ensures that, do you actually end up finding success, it will be far easier and more enjoyable to sustain.
So I'm left with the question of how to achieve authenticity. I wondered, do I just make a list of my likes and dislikes? No, that's too shallow. Do I only make art based on my own experiences? No, that's too limiting. Then I realized something. Anything I decide right here and now will not necessarily apply when it comes time for me to sit down and draw. I'm not the same person I was yesterday, so the only way to create from a place of true authenticity is to create from the present moment.
That's a bit of a problem for me though, as spontaneous creation has never yielded the best results for me. Not only that, but staying in the present is tricky; the past and future will always sneak into everything we do and think. What's the solution, then?
I think the solution is to just stop giving a fuck. Your true self is your whole self, even the parts that are less than ideal. Stop struggling and resisting, and just create, letting go to the greatest extent that you can. That is how, I conclude, authenticity is achieved.
That's all well and good. Now if I could only figure out how to be original.
...The perfectionist cycle of madness continues.
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