One of my friends and I talked about Art this afternoon, and the issues surrounding being an artist and she encouraged me to write the gist of our conversation down, because it reminded her of exactly the issues she’s going though being an artist but not making a living at it.

It reminds me that quite often lately, friends have responded to my thoughts about Social Media and Art, as well, and it seems to me when people, independent of one another are saying similar things there is probably some truth in it.

For example, my friend Valeria mentioned this post from my Webmetricsguru.com blog that was republished in Social Media Today - Social Media Measurement of Attention / Engagement - some more thoughts about it as a post that she wish she had written herself.   Others responded to a slightly earlier post on Making a Case for Social Media - are we doing a poor job of Marketing Social Media? and my friend Jared Freedman thought my Formula for Virtual Friending - what’s a virtual connection worth? Some ideas - a start, at least had some inspiring information - even if the formulae, he thought, was too complicated.

So, with those examples in mind, when my friend Janice, asked me to write down this information, which I normally would not - I figured….. why not?

Recently I’ve been in a dilemma about painting and my own work - I started painting again, after stopping for a long time, a few years ago after going though a difficult time (I won’t go into what spurred my decision); I felt I had to paint just to keep myself from exploding.

After a while, though, I noticed I was stuck again, that I was unwilling to really experiment that much with new materials and techniques, that I often went to paint being unprepared, having no real problem or show, or anything to work on - just a feeling that I’m paying for a studio space, I ought to go.   When I got to the studio space, I often struggled to get anything going and often enjoyed talking to artists as much, and sometimes, more than actually painting.

Painting itself, was an uneven affair, inspiration is often hit or miss - and I noticed that I got bored quickly.  When I began painting again, I worked much quicker, but I still felt stuck with my concept and often had a hard time with creating work that might be inconvenient for me (setting up oil paints and cleaning them up, buying, stretching and storing canvas, was just the beginning.

Also, while at an opening tonight at Brooklyn Artists Gym, the show was not well hung and lacked any real curator, and hardly anything really attracted me that I wanted to look at it - I chalked that up to my belief that work needs to speak to you first - just because an artist puts something out on a wall in fount of us does not oblige me to have to look at it.  There’s so much competing for our attention now, especially now (in fact, I deal with that in the post on Social Media Measurement of Attention / Engagement - some more thoughts about it - we have only 100%, not more than that, and with everything hitting at us, competition for our attention -we need to hold back and just engage with what draws us to it - and there wasn’t anything on the walls that spoke to me - so I made no real attempt to look at it closely.

Look, as an artist - I don’t think the world owes us anything - just because you do work does not mean anyone has to look at it - if anyone does look at work, likes, it loves it, its because it speaks to them, means something - otherwise, why bother?

I also saw that when I had my work in shows as recent as this spring (Art Opening in Williamsburg at Heart and Soul Pilates)

- I had no control over how my paintings were displayed, the lady put my Rejection painting, the landscape one, above, in a dark corner of her gallery, even as I was assured by her this would not happen - in the two shows I was part of this year, my work looked invisible with the dozens of other paintings they were displayed with.

Object placement and lighting, so important for physical objects, which is what paintings are, was not my friend, nor were curators - and I got discouraged, as I did, many years back when I also tried to paint - but lost my way.

And I found it again, a few years back, only to find that, having realized my own strength as an artist - that it was not the primary thing that marked my life - that I wasn’t really going to make my living as an artist, nor did I want to, and my work really was not meant for any kind of wide distribution - and, in fact, I had more control over how many people saw my paintings, as a blogger with a few blogs in subjects where I’ve been seen as an influential, that if I wanted to get my work out and seen - I had the means and knowledge to do it myself.

And then when I showed my works this spring, I had to frame them (which cost several hundred dollars) and drag them over to gallery spaces to they’d be shown, just to go back in a few weeks/months and pick them up again.   I had no hope they’d sell, I had no real desire to sell them either - and yet I didn’t have a place to hang them, and they sit in my studio bin, at Brooklyn Artists Gym, where I briefly looked at them, again, today.

So, I was telling Janice that it’s a lot of work to be an artist and at the end of the day, no one really wants the stuff - on one really cares - and that an artist needs a following - people who love the work - people who want to collect it - and people who paint and really succeed at it, like my friend Amy Crehore, feel they have to do it - there is no other way for them.

But I don’t feel that way about my work,  I don’t “have” to do it, and Janice said she felt the same way about her work  - she’s a vision therapist and paints on weekends - but realizes she doesn’t have the time to really do that much.     But in my case, I could have done more than I did - except I’d rather go to Art Openings, meet people, over actually locking my self up in a corner and painting.

And I came to terms with that - being a painter, and to some extent, a writer, is usually a solitary persuit - you need to do it, more often than not - with your self - away from others - even while in a crowd- a certain solitude is needed - it’s almost a requirement that you must, as an artist, be alone with yourself, and like it.

But I don’t like it - I don’t like being alone with myself - and yet, there are times I did enjoy it - but it was often only after I worked though my resistances.

When the spring began, and I took the steps to invest in my own work by framing some pieces, I felt the burden of not knowing where I would I would store them, and often, I’d go to the studio and feel no enthusiasm - and yet, I still did some good work I’m proud of.   But when the summer came, I just took time out and decided I’d sketch, but not paint.   I work full time as a Web Analyst, do a lot of freelance web analytics and SEO work when it’s available, , blog, go to openings, tweetups, several events in NYC and travel to conferences, and now, started a blog network, blogspeedway.com, but going to the studio felt like just “one more job” and I had enough.

And then, I tried to answer a bunch of questions … why?  Why am I in this?  Why am I painting?  Who is this really for?  Does anyone really want it.

I doubted myself and my own commitment to Art.

But, as I told this to Janice, she said that she has a lot of the same thoughts as I do, and that many artists aren’t really talking about it and there is no real place to go, no support really, for artists.

Nor did I really want to talk about it - either - but it seems like it’s something that does need to be talked about.

It’s really hard to be an artist - no one really wants your work, 99% of the time, you have to finance the activity yourself, and art, unlike a trade or profession, is not really considered integral to anything.  Sure, we have artists, museums, foundations, but art, particularly painting (which has lost it’s relevance over cinema and music, which are much easier for people to consume, is more of an appendage of society - something we feel guilty about - like we should have it - but hardly anyone really needs it and it’s hard to evaluate - the quality issue is entirely subjective.

So, in going for Art, as a career, or a calling, it seems those who do and succeed are those who failed, over and over, but never gave up - and cultivated the right friends, eventually forming a following.

I believe in order to succeed, you need a following - collectors (that’s an art dealers job, and often a thankless task - but till you get to the point where you can hire someone to promote your work for you, you have to finance and do it yourself, along with housing it and paying taxes on it - often a thankless task.

And if you just do it because it gives you pleasure, your dismissed as a “dabbler” or weekend artist.

I wish there was  place where artists could talk about all of this stuff - but there doesn’t seem to be - we’re all orphaned - and that let me to ask myself what role Art had in my life.

What I came up with was that I had nothing really to prove to anyone but myself, and Art, for me, was a package that framed my other activities (web analytics, search, blogging and writing art critic, socializing, etc) and it didn’t need to do anything else but that - how successful I was as an artist really didn’t matter - all that mattered was I had a gift and I was sharing it the best way I knew how, and my passionate feelings, when channelled into Art managed to balance me out somewhat, making me a better web analyst, blogger, writer, critic, whatever….. you fill the rest in - that’s what Art’s role was for me, in this life.

And I accepted it.

There, as my friend suggested, I wrote it all down, as best as I could remember it - I think I got most of what I wanted to say down here, on this blog.

Only now, I don’t know what the next step is for me …. what do I do now?