Me, the Impostor

Visitors to "Extended Drawing" looking at my installation of 100+ drawings (May 2010)

Over the past 12 months I've had to confront some of my greatest stumbling blocks in regards to my art making, and in learning to align my desires for a complete life with my daily actions.  As I mentioned in my last post, I took a drastic step to finally allow myself the space to think and create freely, even if temporarily, while I assessed my career path(s), experiences and goals.

Starting in high school, I separated my creative self from the self that earned praise from family, excelled in school, got the right jobs, and bought into a lifestyle that had nothing to do with my desires. This separation continued through college and into my adult life. All of my creative ideas over the years were kept hidden, documented in journals and notebooks that I would put away in boxes or lose. Even my closest friends never knew of my true desires. They could sense (of course, the way true friends do) that something was increasingly wrong and became concerned about my constant melancholy, but they eventually believed my excuses about being overworked, stressed or just going through general quarter-life angst.  Although these explanations were partially true, I alone knew the real reason, but I told myself that I was being responsible and doing the right thing.

Over time, I had convinced myself that art making, writing, or any of my other passions were for those other people, the "real artists." Compared to them, I considered myself to be cowardly, not really creative, and uninspired.  I hung around art openings to continue my self-education in contemporary art and to get to know other artists, but that was about as far as I dared to go for many years.

As the years and my new art career progressed, I realized that although I continued to show in venues in Houston (and recently, New York), make sales and "pay my dues" as a new visual artist, I continued to lack self-confidence. I felt that I didn't know where my work was headed, or even what it was about. Because of these doubts, my lack of art school education, and my overwhelming day job situation, my fear persisted that no one would take me seriously as an artist, including myself.  I was completely entrenched in the "impostor syndrome" described in "Point 2: Don't wait until you know who you are to start making things" of  How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 other things nobody told me) by Austin Kleon.

The best advice that I've received from my mentors, whether in the art world or at my former jobs, all points to working through the unknown. Inspiration is pointless if you are not working. This realization was what caused me to start my "One Drawing a Day" experiment, which evolved into the ever expanding #draw365 project on Twitter and Flickr. I completed one drawing each day from October 2009 - October 2010, no matter how doodly or incomplete it seemed. This project changed my art practice and resulted in several fruitful exhibitions and collaborations.

If you are an artist, make art every day.  Then each day, acknowledge your work and push yourself to be better the next day. Artists make art. Writers write. Make the work, and work hard.