12 12 / 2011
How to create more genuine, authentic art
Express your own truth, whatever it may be
What is your own truth? Your own reason you make art? Do you want to create dream world, pleasant fantasy to escape into and invite others to join you as well? Do you want to comment on state of modern society and point to all its flaws? Do you want to heal yourself and others through cathartic process of creating art piece? Do you want to document world around you? Or do you just want to document your own ideas or feelings through form of diary? Do you make thought-provoking art or thrive of all things absurd and ridiculous?
Whatever it is, express your own truth freely. Share the visions and ideas that lie closest to your heart, express your deepest convictions and ideals courageously, speak up about things that truly bother you, dare to live your truth even if it defies conventions and convey it into your art.
It’s rather easy to recognize trends and emulate them, to get noticed really fast but ingenuity is also easily discovered and you can’t fake very long. Works of art fueled by our genuine emotions, by our own authentic vision of truth are long lasting and of course much more satisfying to create in first place :)
Don’t hold back, you got nothing to lose
Don’t hold back expressing who you are and whatever it is you truly want to express, always strive to give your best. Don’t be afraid of fail/ridicule/critic etc, you really have nothing to lose. When you share your unique, true vision of the world with conviction others react to it and inspires them to share their own vision as well. Sure, there are always those who won’t approve and will criticize you but you’re not here to please everyone :)
Get inspired
And by that I don’t mean only to get inspired by work of other artists. I mean get inspired by life. As cheesy as it might sound it’s true: beauty is all around us. Inspiration can be found everywhere, it can be discovered in sound of raindrops falling on a window glass, in our childhood memories, in casual glance we exchanged with cute stranger on a bus stop, in smell of tangerines on a cold winter evening, in texture of old paper of a vintage book…
The more we learn to accept the process of life, the more beauty of it reveals itself to us. The more we become aware of endless beauty surrounding us, the more we feel inspired by it, the more our own expression of beauty through art becomes genuine and meaningful.
Turn your biggest obstacle into your strongest point
It’s not uncommon for artists to believe in having that one big, seemingly invincible obstacle that prevents them from producing master-piece of their life or achieving career of their dreams. It’s the obstacle that makes their dream so elusive, that keeps them always one step behind form reaching it.
It’s that “if only”. If only I had more time to work on my art, if only I didn’t have this boring job that sucks life out of me, if only my friends and family supported me, if only I could afford better equipment, if only I got a publishing contract, if only I lived in bigger city/different country, if only my art got discovered somehow, if only I had more followers/fans/customers…
If only _________(insert an obstacle of your choice) then I could make exactly that kind of art I want, I could give my best, I would get noticed etc…
The truth is: often within our biggest obstacle lies our biggest possibility for advantage and with changing our point of view we can turn our limitations into our strongest point. When working along with our limitations, challenges and obstacles instead of resisting, fighting them and being frustrated we can turn them into our most powerful asset that differs us from other artists and makes us create more authentic art.
So, let’s say you can’t afford to spend eight hours a day painting and contemplating your every brush stroke, you simply don’t have the time. But, you can, let’s say, make one little painting and make hundreds of stickers out of it and put them all over the city while going to work, running errands, meeting with friends etc. You can take your sketchbook with you everywhere you go and make simple, intuitive, quick sketches or write down funny things you hear or see during your day and even make comics about it that are not polished or technically perfect but cut straight to the core.
If you can’t afford expensive camera use the advantages of your small compact point and shoot. You can take it everywhere with you. You can experiment with unusual angles and quite frankly abuse your little point and shoot in a way you can’t your big, heavy DSLR, you can get it dirty, toss it around, use garbage can as tripod without feeling too much remorse. (I mean you’re not going to do any of that with equipment worth thousands of $ or €.) You can intentionally create gritty, grainy photos with lo-fi feel to them or learn how to edit photos really well in PS or Gimp and rely on post-processing to give that wow! effect to your photos instead on relying on getting high quality straight out of camera images. Possibilities are truly endless.
So, if you don’t see how possibly you could land a publishing contract, well then self-publish, it’s rather easy and non-expensive venture these days. You can always run a blog :) If you can’t connect with anyone close to you, your friends and family don’t understand and support you then connect with people online, create your online community.
No matter what may seem like your biggest obstacle with change of perspective it can be transformed into your biggest advantage. When embracing our limitations we can learn that all along they were just opportunities in disguise, lessons to be learned to make us even better at what we do.
