#workingartist

i’ve started a new project called verdant hearth consulting for working artists who dislike or struggle with maintaining a multi-platform social media presence.

i offer social reset intensives: one-on-one strategy sessions where we clear out the noise, pick the platforms that actually fit your life, and rebuild a gentle, sustainable rhythm that supports your art instead of smothering it.

we focus on:

simplifying your platform mix

designing low-pressure posting routines

setting up light systems you can actually keep up with

keeping your online presence aligned with your real creative practice

this is consulting for artists who are tired of feeling behind and want a calmer way to exist online.

this mainly has to do with competitive art, and its effect on me. i want to reach out even if its to a void, to see if anyone might be able to provide insight or empathy, or even better, some kind of solution.

competitive art killed my motive.

im going to provide some context.

in my youth, in hopes to make a career on my artwork, i spent a lot of time trying to become a decorated artist. i figured being able to put medals on my pieces would attach somehow a sense of value, some sort of notoriety, being a marginalized person from a very secluded and backwards place in the US, i felt a need to fight my way to the top. and i met success! i did, ive created some fantastic memories for myself but i wish i could say that the experience left me with only the joy of my small successes. unfortunately, it also came with a lot of absolutely crushing fear.

i was traveling for these competitions and standing in front of crowds bigger than i'd ever seen, going into buildings taller than i'd ever seen, all of a sudden it felt like i couldn't escape from the millions of eyes.

my most favorite competition was also one of my most terrifying. it was one where i had to perform on-site and paint from life. i remember i had to run to the submission room to make it in on time, i had started over in the middle and had had less than an hour to complete the painting i had done. i remember walking into the room and immediately my head was filled with a million comparisons. i thought i knew better than that, but i guess i didnt know how to apply it to myself in that moment. maybe it was the pressure, the competition was statewide, and i had, once again, never seen that many people in my life, the whole thing was larger than life for me anyways, but i digress.

i spent the rest of the night and the next morning annoying my friends with the absolutely catastrophic anxiety attack that let no mercy on me. i couldnt stop talking about it, couldn't stop thinking about it, couldnt stop sweating, i just couldn't stop turning a perceived failure of the situation over and over in my head.

i was absolutely convinced that i was going to fail, the painting was small and improvisational, the pressure was on and i was going to get crushed. there's no representation of polish, of real discipline, i was going to fail and that was that and i had traveled all this way and my parents had paid so much of the little money we had just for me to fail. it was catastrophic for me, and this is only one story of the many others i have about poring over results and losing my sense of self in the achievements.

i have never had a fantastic sense of self esteem. i dont want to create the impression that i dont know that, or im somehow oblivious to the fact that my problem is personal. i have preexisting mental health issues that sometimes make whatever situation im in almost humorously hyperbolic, i can be very black and white i know that the scale of this competition was absolutely exacerbating these issues.

the problem is what is is now.

i actually met success that night i spent swallowing the ill back into my body on a loop, i went to the awards ceremony the next day and i had absolutely aced it, i won first place and was able to carry that home with me proudly. but i carried it home exhausted, knowing that the price of this success came at the cost of my attached worth. this was what determined my future, in my eyes, because as i said before, this was all in the pursuit of a career, a privilege that very few working artists have the luxury to attain. consistency, notoriety, a way to spend my life surrounded by other creatives, and not by the struggle of my regular life.

at this point, im sure there comes a question to you, if i have had success, why worry? if theres proof to me in objective, why worry about the subjective?

i still feel the pressure i felt that day, every time i pick up a pencil. it has absolutely crippled by experience, and a flow state is almost absolutely unachievable, and this is absolutely counterintuitive to my dream of becoming a career artist. i cant enjoy my artwork anymore. it used to be a place i reclused to, where everything made sense. now, even in the few pieces i manage to finish, i find myself picking them apart with unrelenting scrutiny, if not consciously, then subconsciously. there are no medals, and there are no people, and that is what i have always preferred deeper down, when you remove the necessities of life, but i am left with so much shame, and so much fear.

every choice i make with a pen or pencil or brush or scissor comes with an inescapable dread. it feels as reflexive as gasping when frightened. i have the rest of my life and nothing but time, but i cant escape my own pressure enough to spend that time actually perfecting my craft, and making my artwork, and doing the only thing i really feel that i am supposed to do.

while im aware of my personal attribution, my conflictions, and even that the best decisions in art are sometimes improvisational in nature, i know i am not alone in my effects. there are many other artists i know suffer from a sort of perfectionism of a different or similar variety. i want to know if anyone has found a way to escape the pressure.

my inbox is open.

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