inconsistent art™

ive been doing a lot of introspection after essentially hitting my breaking point earlier this month. i've been restlessly driven to create for the past... over 10 years?

i started taking drawing seriously when i was 13, and now i'm almost 25. my art really evolved and improved over time, but i weirdly developed a sunk cost fallacy-like attachment to what "my art" was. i think, by the time i hit my 20s, the art that 13 year old me wanted wasnt in line with what 21 year old me wanted. but there's a feeling like i poured all of my experience into making art like that, and i had to continue improving very linearly and stick exactly with what i was "good" at.

completely unintentionally i boxed myself in to art that didn't really interest me, and i honestly didnt even know it. i was going through frequent episodes of psychosis at the time, and between the antipsychotics i was taking and the fact that my art didnt bring me joy, i just felt so devoid of creativity, it was like i had lost a part of myself, which i think i had attributed to the psychosis not my own discontent, so i forced myself to keep making even when it truly didn't bring me a shred of happiness.

as ive gotten through that and had a bit more clarity, i realized my very deep seeded perfectionism in combination with the very rigid "must improve on what i already know" was making me genuinely, viscerally, hate creating. this year i had a few bad experiences with some people who treated me poorly for a sense of entitlement they felt to my art, and even though i have dealt with genuinely far worse, the pile up of those experiences lit the fuse and i just full on exploded.

after i kind of cooled off, my urge to create wasn't gone, but i did recognize very clearly that i didn't find the art i was making interesting, it felt transactional, and very hollow. it just really didn't speak to me in any way. i went back through every art piece i'd done that i actually liked, and noticed the things that did actually speak to me. in short, it's animals and surrealism, and now knowing that, i'm gonna work toward making art that i enjoy again. sorry 13 year old me.

i do feel a sense of grief, like in order to do this i have to kill an artist who i really do believe deserves to make the kind of art she's making. and to a lesser extent, i'm going to be letting go of many of the things in my art that were praised, so i feel a little vulnerable letting go. but i know in my gut if i continued doing things the way i felt i ought to, that i'd have completely destroyed my will to create permanently. so that artist im scared of killing would have been dead anyway i guess.

i dont think i'll be immune to the perfectionism that's haunted me for years like this, but i think at the very least, it will be something i feel happy to create in the first place. i want to record, like i said, primarily for me and my own feeling of "i dont see the art i want to watch out there, so i'll have to make it for myself", but if there's anyone who wants to join me on that journey that makes me happy too. plus small things like the diy palettes and sketchbooks i want to show people how to make.