Your Art is for You, Too

When we do this work of making art for others, we can betray and deny ourselves joy by always giving away our talent, time, and energy. Remember your art is for you, too.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to make art for other people.

It has always brought me joy and pleasure no matter what challenges I was facing in my life. Not only that, but it also gave me purpose, confidence, and a way to show my love and appreciation for friends and family.

But what I loved most of all about creating art for others and myself was the feeling of calm that it would provide me with. 

Making art gave me inner peace.

As I grew older though, things began to change. What once gave me so much pleasure to do for others began to fill me with anxiety. 

My early schooling, for example, set the groundwork for this disconnection. In college and art classes, I learned that art making was only worthwhile if others deem it so or if it was profitable.  No longer was making art for art’s sake a noble endeavor. Instead, art was supposed to only be enjoyed, valued, and judged by our teachers, peers, and the outside world. 

Having internalized this way of thinking for so long, I didn’t realize the harm I was inflicting on my psyche. No longer was art making a personal and self-exploratory experience of joyful self-expression; it was now fair game for everyone and anyone to consume, critique, and regurgitate.

I was so focused on pleasing others with my art that I had forgotten how to enjoy making art for myself. And overtime, this way of being slowly diminished my spirit.

Something had to change.

Thankfully, after many nights of quiet self-reflection, I had an epiphany:

We artists need to have balance and boundaries for our artistry when we make art for others, and we need to have some compassion for ourselves.

When we’re kids, we create freely and uninhibitedly from our hearts with no expectations and pressures placed on us to be perfect, please others, or strategize how to make a profit. We create because it’s fun and it fills our cups. And it still can even if we are making a living from our artistry. 

Creating is an activity that is always available to us for nourishment.  So long as we choose to keep our relationship with our art just for us, we can set limits on how our energy is used and who has access to our creative reserves. We do not have to remain open to any and everyone nor does it have to be for everyone and everyone’s gaze. Nor do we have to exclude ourselves from enjoying the art that we make for others. It can be just for our closest friends and family.  And it can be for our own enjoyment, too. 

So, if you have accepted some toxic scripts about what it means to be an artist like I have, then know that you can unlearn them.  You can reclaim what is yours and what will always be.