MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN ARTIST?<\/p>\n
Art is not about\u00a0competition. It\u2019s about revelation. Revealing who you are and how you feel from\u00a0the inside out. Art is not about winning or succeeding. It’s about finding what\u00a0is hidden and exposing it in its most raw form. In the words of acclaimed
artist, Georgia O\u2019 Keefe, \u201cWhether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is\u00a0no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt blocked for the\u00a0last few days when I sat down to write. That\u2019s unusual for me. I have some pretty\u00a0effective ways of getting around writer\u2019s block but this time, nothing seemed\u00a0to work. I paced around for a while, I got in my car and did some errands and\u00a0when I got back home, I knew what my problem was. I like to be an inspiration
to my students and friends. I like to offer hope, support and encouragement\u00a0when I write my prompts and my blogs. But I didn’t feel hopeful or supportive\u00a0right then. I didn’t feel inspired and I didn\u2019t want to pretend. I didn’t like\u00a0admitting it but I felt disappointed and stuck and when I sat down at my\u00a0computer, I knew that was where I needed to begin. \u201cStart Where You Are,\u201d I\u00a0reminded myself. \u201cDon’t compare yourself to anyone else.\u201d This blog is the
fruit of that commitment.<\/p>\n
When you create anything\u00a0from scratch, comparing yourself to another artist is not only a waste of time.\u00a0It\u2019s also deadly since it kills off inspiration. It invalidates your unique\u00a0vision of the world. You may think you just don’t measure up so why bother\u00a0writing or painting or dancing or composing? But if you block your unique\u00a0expression, it will be lost for all time. You don’t have to believe in yourself
or your work. You just have to keep it yours, clearly and directly. You need to\u00a0keep the channel open. That is what it means to be an artist.<\/p>\n
There are times when I\u00a0expose my difficult feelings about something in my writing and someone rushes\u00a0in to try and fix it. If I admit to feeling depressed, one of my readers says,\u00a0\u201cTry doing this.\u201d When I admit to feeling lonely, someone else says, \u201cRemember\u00a0to be grateful.\u201d I understand the sentiment, it’s all coming from a loving
place, but trying to fix someone else doesn’t accomplish anything. That isn\u2019t\u00a0what artists are looking for. Whether we create from an open heart or a broken\u00a0heart, when we allow our truth to bleed out onto a page, a canvas, a stage or a\u00a0screen, we simply want to be witnessed, exactly as we are. We\u2019re not trying to\u00a0make lemonade from lemons. We want to be heard and understood, exactly as we
are. We\u2019re not trying to change our mood. We’re trying to express it honestly. We\u00a0want to know that someone else feels like we do so we can make a connection and\u00a0feel human, especially when we\u2019re in our darkest places.<\/p>\n
We all do our best to\u00a0construct a world around us that feels comfortable. But feelings come and go.\u00a0The good ones and the tough ones. We don’t know how long they\u2019ll stick around\u00a0before they morph into something else because life is dynamic, not stagnant and
everything changes with no assistance from us. Since we don’t know what\u2019s\u00a0coming next, the best thing we can do is be authentic in the moment. We can tell\u00a0the truth without judging or projecting. We can expose our true nature and\u00a0invite everyone else to do the same.<\/p>\n
That is what it means to\u00a0be an artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN ARTIST? Art is not about\u00a0competition. It\u2019s about revelation. Revealing who you are and how you feel from\u00a0the inside out. Art is not about winning or succeeding. It’s about finding what\u00a0is hidden and exposing it in its most raw form. In the words of acclaimedartist, Georgia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}