Artists friends and collaborators,
I found this article and thought it apropos to share.
The Myth of the Emerging Artist was written by a woman working on a collaborative Off-Off Broadway theatre production, and reflects on the myth that you're not a "real artist" until you have some sort of recognizable name or pockets full of dough...a down-right lie that we sometimes fall prey to. Her testament is convicting, I think, and personally comes along at a moment when I really needed to hear it.
If we approach our work with the mindset that we are ALREADY artists, we can achieve excellence, no matter how well "recognized" it may be. I fall into the trap all-too-often of thinking "I'm not good enough", "I need more education", "I'm not a Union actor yet, therefore I can't...". They're all pretty ludicrous statements that need to be banished from my brain. Because...look at what we're doing and what we've done? CAUSE is something. And we're going to keep making something excellent.
Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI fully agree. There's a sense that until you've "made it" (whatever that "it" may be - and which "it" is always an arbitrary idea anyway) you aren't a real artist.
Tell that to a child who finger paints or sings "ABCDEF...Q!" In their minds, they are artists already - and they're not wrong. They're creating. They're expressing ourselves.
Besides, as Oscar Wilde said, "Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly."
Now, by and large I think most Catholic Artists aren't singing "ABCDEF...Q!" by mistake (if they're singing that). Modern Catholic Artists - those who may be well known, like Jim Caveziel, and those toiling away in relative secret (aka, known "only" within a fifty mile radius) are not emerging artists. They're already creating. *We're* already creating.
And this, I think, is Very Good.