It’s a question I used to ask other artists
before I became an artist myself.
And, do you know what?
Most of them didn’t know the answer.
The problem wasn’t their fault—
I was asking the wrong artists.
I only asked the small sample
I had contact with from time to time.
Some painted house portraits
or cat and dog portraits.
One only drew children’s portraits—
these little child heads in pastel
on large sheets of paper.
I remember seeing them line the hallways of houses,
every head the same size.
Some painted murals inside the giant houses
that began to rise up
around my picture frame shop in New Jersey.
These artists would spend weeks (sometimes months)
on scaffolding built high
in the entranceway or living room
of these giant mansions,
painting scenes of Italy or France,
or just using Venetian plaster
to mimic the walls of great houses
in these far-off places.
But none of these ways of being an artist
appealed to me.
They all sounded like jobs to me.
Art, for sure—
just art
being created
with someone else in mind.
One artist even gave me a bit of advice he heard from a ‘successful’ artist:
“If you paint a crow and you sell the painting,
make another one.
And keep doing that until they stop selling.
Then paint something else.”
This is not the sort of advice I was looking for.
It wouldn't work for me because:
I don’t know what I’m going to make next.
I don’t have orders
ready to be filled
I don’t have a list of commission requests
waiting to be completed.
I just have an empty table
covered in cloth
with a jumble of tools to one side,
and a bag of clay on the floor,
and my imagination
waiting
to be set free.