This week we look at three more tips for expanding your repertoire.
4. Investigate your fears
We often hide from ourselves the fact that something is making us scared or anxious. Maybe we have real fears that our drawing skills aren’t up to snuff but keep dodging that painful information and paint abstractly not because we genuinely want to paint abstractly but because we know that our realistic paintings wouldn’t measure up. It is very brave work but very valuable work to look your fears and anxieties in the eye. Only then will you understand your true situation. That understanding is bound to open the door to courageous new efforts.
5. Articulate your possibilities
What new art do you want to attempt? What new marketing efforts do you want to try? If you don’t get them named, it’s unlikely that you can pursue them. If, on the other hand, you can say clearly to yourself that you want to try your hand at some Calder-esque mobiles or that you want to learn how to affiliate market your paintings, that clarity of expression will help you begin to move in new directions.
6. Make a strong choice
Let’s say that you have several kinds of new art that you want to make: a venture into sculpture, a multi-media project, some monoprinting, a new style involving personal history, and so on. It is exciting to want to do many things but it can also prove paralyzing to have too many simultaneous choices. Choose something strongly without second-guessing whether it is the best choice and without grieving that you can’t do x or y today because you are doing z. Until we make strong choices of this sort, we tend not to get anything done.
Next week, the final 4 tips!
I am looking for a writer to write an Artist Bio for me. I can write it but I find it difficult for me to write about myself in the 3rd person.
I am an Abstract Expressionist Artist. I started very young in painting traditionally…then I moved to figure drawing and finally to the abstract. This is where I will stay in (an overall) focus.
However, I am also an experimental abstract artist and there is hardly a painting day that goes by that I am not attempting something new and wonderful on canvas or paper…and I never want to get caught up in a rut or of not expanding my creative self. I don’t think that will ever happen.
I understand there is very little NEW out there but… whatever has already been tried will (also) tried by me. And I know this is not the accepted ‘norm’ in the marketing world…they want a continual flow and I believe a lot of this sold to us ‘frame of mind’ was developed so that the art agents and gallery owners could SELL the artists talents…(so much easier and less confusing to sell and artist’s one large achievement than many)…and I do honor that, (I understand it) but if given my personal choice to either give up exploring art (and sell more) or sell less and continue to explore my art options and creativity I chose the later.
And by that choice I am not a fish moving upstream at odds with all the other fishes, because I realize that I’ve made my CHOICE and I honor myself first. I will not compromise in order to sell more of my paintings.
I am so grateful to hear someone say out loud what I feel as an artist. I have moved through a number of mediums. Watercolor took a long time to master the techniques. But then, I was ready to explore oil and acrylic, ceramics, metal sculpture, and printmaking. Needless to say they all have a learning curve and I find I am reaching my fullest best self when I’m totally absorbed and creating in a new medium. Taking the knowledge and moving it on to the next project and the next ….