Inspiration Fridays! What if the opposite were also true?
What if the opposite were also true?
Last week I had an incredible show downtown at the new Scott Lewis Gallery. Two full nights, of wine, music, art, and hundreds of my closest friends.
“It requires a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” – Henri Matisse
I sold a bunch of work, met incredible people, and I even got some painting in! I should be over the moon! So why does this week feel so funky?
The “post show crash” (PSC) is a real thing. Once the wine is gone, and the endorphins have settled, the only question left is “How did your show go?” And for an artist, this can be an extremely tough question to answer.
Collectors’ Night at the Scott Lewis Gallery
The question is good-natured enough, but unfortunately, the answer rarely lines up with our society’s measures for success. Many artists’ shows don’t result in sales, and sometimes the attendance can be spare to none. Does this make their work less valuable or the paintings themselves less successful?
Van Gogh.
There is a lot that goes into preparing for a show. Painting it is the big one, but there are titles and tags, invites and social media, even phone calls! Above and beyond all that, is the constant and creeping existential dread the goes hand and hand with laying your soul bare for strangers, hagglers, and looky-loos alike.
Believe it or not, the real success for an artist is in showing up, doing of the work, and being willing to share that work with the people in their community (or maybe even someone else’s).
Your neighbors, parents from your child’s school, your spouse’s coworkers, your clients, who may or may not be keeping an eye on how well your work is moving, and with people you’ve never met but bring with them advice and opinions.
So if you’re an artist, and you’ve managed to put together a show and then gone further and hung that show on a wall for people to see. Congratulations! You nailed it!