If you are an artist, you are a leader. You are, also, likely an alchemist.
As an Alchemist, your job is to transmute, to transform; one example is the dream and practice of turning lead into gold, literally and metaphorically. To make art. To make images. In whatever medium you use – you are sharing a message.
It is like turning this basic body you possess into gold, because it makes these shining pieces of beauty from almost nothing.
In the past century, we have been taught to get a job, go to work, pay the bills, and everything will be alright.
The capitalist system that dominates the globe needs workers, and schools dutifully turned them out. People took jobs they didn’t like (or resented) and dealt with it until they retired. For the majority of the working class, their life was devoid of realizable dreams, of plans, because no one encouraged them, and the means to achieve those dreams were not obvious.
That helps to create anxiety, a feeling of being lost and unproductive, and even an existential angst about why we must work so much and enjoy life so little.
It is no wonder we see a rise in antidepressants; life is laid out to be a mediocre exercise in making money, managing stress, and taking care of your family.
Now the post–pandemic economy is even more competitive, and when you get out of college, getting a good job is very difficult. The competition is growing all the time.
We hear and read about how the rich get richer, and it is an unfair game — insinuating that you probably don’t stand a chance.
My advice is don’t play that game; don’t believe that; it’s just what evil corporations want, and it will keep you down and stop you from doing anything creative, like starting a revolution on your canvas or in the streets.
What this new economy needs is innovators.
Don’t always look for gallery approval, hoping to be taken care of as artists were in the 1980s; those days are long gone. The artists who are really making money, are finding ways to bypass the gallery system as well as use it.
For example, graffiti artists like Banksy are finding ways to bring their work to market without a gallery, without critics, without an intermediary, and without compromising, and you can use their tactics and adapt them to your own needs, even if your work is very different in style, approach and message.
You can potentially have it all: the independence of an artist like Banksy as well as representation by galleries all over the world.
There are so many ways to live life as an artist that there is no one model you need to fall into, be it academic, hobbyist, or self-taught.
Banksy uses one model that he basically invented himself! He is not really a graffiti artist, but someone who has found a way of presenting himself without the typical support (galleries and museums) and created his own mystique, his own story.
But many lesser-known artists are doing creative things online and in places you never thought art could be.
Your art is valuable. And people are prepared to pay for it.
Want proof?
Just look at the Kickstarter website, you can see that the world values creativity - and writing.
Now it is time. Your art, your creative ideas, your willingness to be able to take a risk for what you believe in are all part of the new economy that you must engage unless you want to keep looking for a job that is boring, dull, and will suck the creative life right out of you!
That’s why I wrote Making It in the Art World: 2021 - which comes out on June 1st.
This book will give you tools to pursue your dreams in a vastly changed post pandemic world, and the workbook that is included at the end of every chapter is a way for you to make a contract with yourself about realizing those dreams and making a plan for them to happen.
