I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Tuesday Book Club, I share an idea from a book.
In his book Making Your Creative Mark: Nine Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals, artist and artist coach Eric Maisel writes, “You are free to make meaning, and you are obliged to do so.” This is the work of an artist: To make meaning.
How to do that? Maisel suggests a morning ritual, the morning meaning check-in:
Here I want to provide one simple, straightforward technique for making use of the freedom you possess to create the meaning you need. It is the idea of a morning meaning check-in where, first thing each day and before your “real day” starts, you envision your day and decide where you will make your daily meaning investments. This morning meaning check-in, which takes a minute or two at most, reminds you of your intentions, focuses your mind, increases your resolve, and helps you live more mindfully and more powerfully.
I wonder if all or most artists think they are making meaning with their work, or are some of them just trying to produce decorative things?
As a conceptual, narrative artist, I am always attempting to make meaning with my work.
Maisel says artists must be passionately interested in what they are doing to make progress (and to make meaning):
Mere interest does not sustain motivational energy, and it isn’t a match for the obstacles that arise as you try to create. You need passionate interest in order go generate energy and to see you through the rigors of creating….
If I had to tease out the key motivator that fuels the artist’s journey, it would be passion. Passion creates and restores mental energy. Many people feel mentally tired a lot of the time and don’t realize that nothing creates mental energy or restores it when it has drained away better than love, enthusiasm, and curiosity.
When you feel passionate about your work, it’s ok to get obsessed about it. It’s ok to feel ambitious about it. And it’s ok to get super-crazed about it:
Opt for intensity and even exhaustion. One of the ways we honor our pledge to make personal meaning is to do the work required of us, even if that effort exhausts us. if it exhausts us, we rest, but we do not let the fear of exhaustion prevent us from making our meaning.
I didn’t feel truly passionate about my work as an artist and writer until I found my personal point-of-view, my artistic voice. This only happened after years of developing skills, observing and mimicking other artists, and finally letting go of what other people were doing in order to move in my own direction.
Maisel writes, “It is very hard to be passionate about what you’re doing if you haven’t found your voice as an artist.”
He offers ten tips for finding or reclaiming your voice. I summarize them here, with my own experiences of following his advice:
- Detach from your current visual library. Let go of your attachment to what other people are doing. I had to stop looking at all my abstract acrylic books and stop following tutorials from other artists in order to let my style and voice emerge.
- Try not to rest on skills and talent. Don’t just complete artworks that you know you can do well. “Your strongest subject matter and style choices depend on what you want to say rather than on what you are good at producing.” I’ve started doing more representational work, because it makes sense for my current obsession project Things Men Gave Me. I’m getting better at it, but I’m no expert. I feel my voice as an artist grow as I become more willing to take on art projects that don’t sit squarely in my skills comfort zone.
- Allow risk-taking to feel risky. Every time I publish a new painting and essay pairing, I feel self-conscious. Every time I reach out and tell someone about my project, I feel like I’m about to be rejected. The project feels extremely risky. Maybe I’m doing something right?
- Complete projects for the sake of making progress. One reason I’m publishing story-painting pairs as I go is because each time I do, I’m forced to complete both the story and painting. It’s easy to go partway with art. It’s hard to go all the way and complete something then share it.
- Think at least a little bit about positioning. In other words, consider how your work might be marketed in the future. Every Monday, I write about marketing. Last week, I worked through a marketing exercise in which I outlined my products, my intended target audience, and all the available communication channels I might use to reach that target audience.
- Try to articulate what you’re attempting. Clarify your intentions with words. This helps you understand your artistic voice and communicate better about your work. I’m always writing about my art! But I could stand to do it even more. It might be helpful to write an artist’s statement for Things Men Gave Me and update it every month as I progress.
- Try not to repeat yourself. Repeating yourself can help you be more financially successful as an artist, but it can drain your artistic passion. I loved doing my ski painting-photo conceptual art project Snow Bound, but it would feel very boring to repeat it. I may, however, do something different in the same vein this winter: capturing photos first and then turning them into paintings maybe? That’s a more traditional way to make art than what I did before, but it might be a great way to further develop my new skill of creating representational rather than fully abstract art.
- Revisit your earliest passions. “Finding your voice may involve something as simple and straightforward as making a list of your loves and starting the ones that still energize you.” I’m already doing art about two of my loves: skiing and romance. What other past loves could I use to infuse my art with my own unique voice?
- Think about integrating your different styles. This provides a way of using your existing understanding and skills to come up with some new approach that is still very authentic and unique to you. A new ski photo and painting project with representational aspects is a way I could do that, integrating my Snow Bound work with the new style I’m developing through TMGM.
- Accept never-before-seen results. I definitely felt this with my latest painting The Way a Man Skis. This painting looks and feels absolutely bonkers to me. And now I have a second in progress The Way a Woman Skis, in the same vein. These paintings are really hard to do, and yet so engaging and fun.
Maisel’s book is full of inspiring tips like this. Any time I feel drained as an artist, he’s a reliable guide to finding my creative energy.