Why should we keep making art?

Reasons to not give up.

Jun 27, 2024

Dear Friend,

Happy summer emergence. A season of sensory-richness. Every flower is full on happening, and it happens so fast. A full bloom can be a mind-altering joy when I really pay attention. There are other times when I miss them completely by accident, only discovering shriveled up beige petals or nubs of new seeds and it breaks my heart dearly, but the flowers always keep showing up, so I have been thinking so much about perseverance.

Explosive Dyer’s Chamomile in my garden, drenched in sun, shot at a low exposure.

In this colorful and fleeting world like the one we find ourselves a part of, it’s easy to question if what we are doing is worth doing. As believers in the radical power of creative energy, we already know it is, duh! But sometimes there is doubt. When that happens, it’s essential to get out of our heads and simply practice, even when it’s not showing us instant, obvious validations to keep going. Sometimes the best reasons to keep going are not served to us or found externally. Just keep making your work, trust, and persevere.

Perseverance is showing up regardless, because we believe in the good of it.

I recently asked myself these questions:

Is my art practice benefitting anyone?
How can I enjoy making my art when there are terrible things going on in the world?
If my art isn’t being seen or connected with a lot, why should I make it?
If my art practice isn’t supporting me financially, is it unwise to prioritize making it?
Last time I distilled every viable drop of my soul into a new process it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, why should I try again?
My art isn’t dissolving any problems, transforming perceptions, or changing lives, what am I contributing to?
What’s the point?

If you have ever asked yourself any of the above questions, you may benefit from CONTINUING TO MAKE YOUR WORK DESPITE IT ALL ⊹₊ ⋆

The above questions are reasonable thoughts. But notice that most of them are all about results. This attitude of wondering what the point is if there aren’t beneficial external results all of the time is a sneaky quicksand that often pulls at my feet on certain days such as when I’m about to start my period or if I am on the internet too long or if I haven’t meditated yet or if it’s too cloudy outside.

The problem isn’t that an individual creative practice doesn’t benefit others or the world, it’s the conditioning that tries to prevent us from seeing that it could. Or the conditioning that pressures us to think it has to in the first place.

Who says my creative practice has to save lives in order to be worth doing? Who says it needs to generate a lot of attention and results to be deemed good? Who says it even needs to be good in any case? What even is good?

Devotion without distraction

I believe it’s a very good idea to do my practices without the distraction of expecting anything in return, and continuing to do so even if nothing significant resulted the time before. That is not to say it is easy. However, I have found this makes for very exciting, liberating, and ironically effective practice. It’s almost rebellious. Oh, nothing amazing happened? I’m going to do it again. And again. With reverence.

But how to do this?

Belief

Here’s the thing. Sometimes no one is going to respond. Sometimes no one will reach the checkout. No one will subscribe. Nothing will change. Enlightenment will not occur. Just keep going. The big keep-doing-it-anyway energy connects me to my belief that my practice is intrinsically worth doing. Belief is a very essential thing to have in a practice. Belief for me is a way to feel less like I am trying for results or validation and more like I am getting closer to something else, something different, something that is not a thing at all. If anything positive does result from my practice, I respond with expansive amounts of gratitude, but I am not trying to not rely on positive feedback to validate it’s worth. We all know how that might go… because when there is a thing, there is always a lack of that thing, and I don’t want to allow a lack of external validation do discredit my belief in the good of my practice.

This can be hard after detoxing from the dopamine rollercoaster of social media, which I logged out of in January. I have found that trusting in myself is the best way to distance myself from dependency on validation.

Right now the way I am approaching my art practice is with a belief that if I tend to it with surrender and trust in it, I may find it possible to release the grip on needing things to be a certain way, and open up to an experience of self-within-world that is abundant, content, free, unbound, inspired, and present.

Yes, your belief can be that lofty if you want.

Working on a painting I created for last week’s event.

I promise you, even when it seems like no one cares, someone does. Even when it seems like you’re being self-absorbed or silly, you’re not. Even when there is radio silence. Even when there is darkness in the world. It is still ok to make art, because the world needs you to generate creative electricity more than ever. It might just not have enough stamina right now to boomerang back to you each time and remind you that it’s worth it. You need to believe that for yourself. So remind yourself by continuing to show up and learning the ways you can trust in your practice independently.

I want you to know, dear person reading this, why I write like this. These are not things I am perfect at. I am writing to myself. I need these reminders. For survival. These are things I need to hear and remember.

◯

Will, surrender, devotion. Will, surrender, devotion.

The recipe goes like this:

Care about what you do and feel the way caring about it and doing it heals you
Do it repetitively with reverence for, and belief in, the good of the process itself
Put it out there in some generous form with no expectations for a return
Get a response? Do it again with enthusiasm!
No response? Do it again with just as much enthusiasm!

And not just enthusiasm, but with the contentment that you already have everything you need within you, and the trust that everything else will unfold and come to you as it should.

Reasons to not give up

Your art practice benefits others by enriching your community with beauty and meaning. Art has the transformative power for inner healing, which allows you to show up with more compassion, kindness, and patience.
When there are terrible things going on in the world, your art practice is a beacon of hope and resilience.
Creating art, even if no one is seeing it, is a deeply personal act of liberation. By transcending the need for external recognition, you become more free.
Regardless of financial results, creating art purely for the sake of creation is the true essence of artistic expression. You’re supported more than you realize.
If something doesn’t work out the way you like, you just learned something. Perseverance will offer you even more growth and wisdom.
Art is a therapeutic outlet for stress and uncertainty. Even if you feel your art isn’t changing people’s lives, it’s changing yours, and you can influence change from your foundation of wellness and creative fulfillment.
The point of making art isn’t something you can already know, it’s something you keep discovering as you make it and it’s always changing.

Notice how these are all answers to the first sets of questions in the beginning of this post. ˘◡˘

What helps you keep going? Which reason/answer above feels the most resonant to you? I’d love to know, so please leave a comment if you’d like:

P.S. You can still win this painting!

Last week I launched (!!!) my new dimension of this Substack: Palette of the Month. You can read more here about this project and how by being a subscriber you will receive exclusive posts about my process, and each month a paid subscriber will be randomly chosen to win a painting.

Your subscription is a gift to me, and I love the idea of giving away art.

Field of Visions is a Substack newsletter by artist Kristen Drozdowski about creativity and how it leads us through self-discovery. Palette of the Month Club is their monthly discovery of natural, foraged color, available for paid subscribers of Field of Visions. Each month Kristen creates a palette of 3-5 hand made paints or inks using botanical, mineral or urban/household/waste stream pigments that are consciously foraged through building relationship with each material, discovering even more inner lessons along the way. Subscribers will receive full documentation of the process, methods, and meaningful stories about Kristen’s conversations with the beings-as-materials and people-as-places they discover.

Field of Visions