Dear Artist,
Often, when asked what advice I might give to you, I say something like, “Practice!” Or, “Do it every day!” Or some such thing. Everyone says it and it’s true. But the deeper truth is – all of that is meaningless if not for one thing. There is only one real insight I can offer you:

YOU HAVE TO LOVE IT.

You have to love what you do. Above all else, no matter how much you practice, how much time you give it, how much money you make (or, more likely, don’t make) if you don’t love it, it won’t matter.

I don’t mean some romantic notion of namby-pamby frilly love. Early on it may be something akin to the budding romance of first love but in the end, it’s not this never ending effervescent fuzzy feeling in your chest or your gut that – when you make your art – you swoon like a smitten lover.

No, it’s that deep and abiding thing that moves beyond personal joy. It’s a partnership. A marriage. An agreement. It is the joy of existing in the world with another. It’s play and it’s work. It’s being there with it, through thick and through thin. It’s commitment.

Art is a long-tail game. And I mean really long. You’ll likely be doing it until you die and even then, at best, there will only be a modicum of any apparent outward success – especially if you compare it to the endless string of tchotchke inanities that bring people financial wealth.

You see, there are so many ups and downs on this road. You’ll need to learn to thrive in the famines between the feasts. Loving what you do will help.

People will forget about you. They’ll walk right by and ignore all your hard earned moments of grandeur, your subtle understandings, the fine moments you labored over while your eyes or your feet gave out.

Some will try to rob you or cheat you. Frankly, around practically every corner and at every age, there’s a con artist who doesn’t bring any value into the world looking to take advantage of a real creator like you. But for every one of them, there’s a hundred – a thousand – ten thousand – true fans who will appreciate you and be truly inspired by you and you will illuminate their world.

Still others will critique you and dispose of you. Been there. Done that. Stamp a label on it. Next. An off-hand comment by one useless critic might stick with your sensitive soul for years. You have to learn to both slough it off and (and this is important) learn from it. Listen to the critics but don’t bow to them. Never bow to them. When you have been cowed by the cutting blade of some useless critic’s word play, your art will suffer, I guarantee it.

You don’t want that which you love to suffer.

People will find reasons to be dissatisfied with your work. Mostly because people are just dissatisfied in general. Paint something like you’ve already painted because you want to explore an idea? You’re repeating yourself. Want to head off in a new direction? The new work isn’t as good as the old. Spend 6 months in focused work on a piece? They will forget about you.

Business will be hard. No one expects you to love the business of it. It’s tiring. It’s wearying. Not just the day to day work of it but wearying for the soul that seeks only expression. Your creative momentum will frequently flag against the grinding slog of the self-propelled ship that is the SS Entrepreneurial Spirit of the Artist. To be fair, you might, at times, enjoy the business part – and I truly hope that you do because, as with everything else, it is a game and we are making it up as we go along. For all that it is – the business side of art – it has its place and is an art in-and-of itself. Developing that craft will help you create the space for your creative spirit. But it’s ok if you don’t LOVE the business. Few do.

It’s the Art – YOUR ART – that you have to love.

You’re going to have to give stuff up. Your friends might live paycheck to paycheck. If you decide to try to make a living at it, you’ll live piece to piece, or gig to gig, or piece to gig to piece, or gig to piece to year to year… There’s little rhyme or reason to that elusive pattern of sales. It’s feast or famine with a long, slow, barely thirst-quenching trickle in between. You’ll have to decide what you want to bet on in that patternless pattern – what you want to gamble on your own talents and imagination. You’ll lose some bets. But you’ll win others.

And when there’s no money coming in, don’t blame the art. Don’t break up with it just because it isn’t paying you what you know it’s worth. Would you leave your partner simply if money were tight? Money isn’t love. You leave a partner if there’s no love. When it’s just money, you find another way to make ends meet together. If you love the art, your craft in the world, then you stick with it, for richer or for poorer.

There may, at times, be long droughts between one success and another – droughts that could last years. In those times there will, finally and when all else fails, only be you to depend on.

And if those droughts are creative – if you flit from one idea to another, not quite sure where to settle – this too is part of the dance. No one expects you to knock it out of the park time after time after time, even if, really, they sort of do. Just be patient with yourself and your process and be diligent in your tasks. Get to know your craft. Learn from it. Understand it. Grow with it. Respond to it the way you would a dance partner, a friend, a spouse.

Trust it. Surrender to it. Follow where it leads but always be ready to nudge it in a new direction.

This is, after all, your love.

In the end, in the long dark nights of your soul, when you turn to your work and it is only you and your creative expression, you have to find, again and again, that place of loving it: the love of your craft, of your work, of your art.

Some moments it will be easy. As easy as a breath or a heartbeat. It is effortless.  You’re mining jewels from the depths of your imagination and sometimes you hit a vein, a motherlode. You will discover a real gem in the depths of all those hours and weeks and years of toiling away at the walls of your cave.

O artist, given to you is the whole of the world. The whole of the world works and strives and lives and dies with nary a moment to breathe. Perhaps, for but one moment, you can be that one soul who has that one breath that is breathed, not for labor, nor the moment of respite that comes after, but merely for the expression of what it is to be human.

You get to look out and tell us: what does it look like from there?

So, if you decide to make a life of this – if you give your all and everything over to it, knowing the hardships that will come to you, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the glorious moments of seeing the all and everything and all the moments in between… If this gift is given unto you and you decide to make a life with it, then but one thing is asked of you – no, is implored of you:

That you love it.

– An Artist