This art is not for you
What is art without an audience?
Years ago during the pandemic when I became my child’s de facto art teacher because the world had shut down, I encouraged her to share her drawings. Drawings that she retreated into as an escape from, but also to process, her confusing adolescent emotions against the backdrop of an even more confusing world.
I truly believed then that to be an artist, you had to connect with an audience. We debated whether art was meaningful without the sort of activation that comes through discourse and sharing. Artists give form to abstract and complex ideas, but it’s only in dialogue that it transcends from personal expression to a shared experience. It also helps instill confidence in young artists as they learn how to accept critical feedback and enter into a participatory culture of exchange. Art is communication. Art is human connection.
And so I encouraged her to open an Instagram art account and helped her enter competitions. This little nudge took her far: student gallery shows around NYC, a handful of sales, a published piece in The New York Times, and even a juried student exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not bad for a 16 year old kid. But it was only when she saw how her artwork stirred such intense reactions that she began to grasp the power she could wield with charcoal and paper.
Now as a college student, she has turned private with her artwork again. She has not, however, stopped creating. She may even be more prolific than ever. Her sketchbooks are filled with drawings not shared with anyone, not even with me. She paints in her dorm room as a way to decompress from her STEM-heavy classes, but has no intention of showing it anywhere, online or otherwise.
As with so many other lessons that I’m learning through my adult children, I’ve now reexamined what I previously believed: that to be an artist, you must share it with an audience.
This leads to two questions I’m revisiting:
Who do we create for?
Why do we feel the need to build an audience?
Oh, I’m an artist.
Do you have an Instagram where I can see your art?
This is a close cousin to:
I’m a writer.
Where are you published?
For creatives of any discipline, an online presence is almost assumed, though it can carry a price. The way the system of metrics has trapped us into correlating likes and follows to our sense of self-worth is discussed ad nauseam, but for artists, it doesn’t stop there. It distorts how we perceive the artistic value of our work. Yes, even these Substack newsletters.
The positives shouldn’t be overlooked. Part of why I became disillusioned as an art student was because I finally understood how elitism and nepotism ran deep through the establishment, so I do appreciate how the internet has eroded gatekeeping and opened a door to the democratization of art forms. Building an audience also fosters community and gives us legitimacy by being seen.
The social media feedback loop, however, capitalizes on this legitimization by manipulating it into a cycle of constant sharing and metric chasing. When our work doesn’t get likes or views, we question why. When it does gain traction, we start to get curious about converting these likes and views into sales. Art becomes content. Art becomes commerce.
When I quit Instagram nearly two years ago and started to pull away from all other social media sites, I did question whether this was a bad “business” move. What if I finally made something I was excited about and wanted to share? What if I wanted to sell my artwork at some point in the future?
It also uncovered more existential questions.
If I no longer shared my art, would I still feel like creating?
It’s really interesting to me that my kids, who are digital natives, have an easier time divorcing themselves from constant social media posting (different from consuming, mind you) than I do. Maybe it’s because our generation experienced the onboarding of social media first-hand; we remember a life before and then witnessed how it flattened barriers. Once we saw how accessible it was to give visibility to the invisible, it quickly became addictive.
I built an entire business exclusively through social media. A decade plus ago, it wasn’t difficult to sell any product I created once I built an audience. It was also incredibly easy to fall into the capitalist trap of commodifying everything.
I think this hits at the crux of my struggles. I think of an artist as someone who can’t go through life without this intense, compulsive need to create. I’m not convinced that I fit this definition 100%—not yet, at least. I’ve always created, sure, but that creative need was subsumed by my work as a designer and small business owner, so I never felt the urgency—or perhaps more accurately, never had the headspace—to make art for art’s sake. For years, art was commerce.
But now that my career is behind me, the road to an artistic life has been bumpy. The questions I’ve asked myself cannot be answered easily. I’ve been open about this struggle for as long as I’ve been writing—many of you know that. It’s been a long, syrupy process. Messy and sometimes unsatisfying. Making art is hard. I know it doesn’t have to be, but for me it’s been hard.
It’s only through making my process more private that I feel like I’m getting anywhere. More experimentation and an intentional discipline of practice. I’ve filled an entire sketchbook with drawings which is something I’ve never quite managed to do. I share a few pages here today, but in general have not felt compelled to share much at all.
This is an incredibly freeing take for someone who has been extremely online for eighteen years. To make art that does not exist for an audience. To fight the need to feel validated. To fight the desire to even be seen.
But I also reserve the right to change my mind when it feels right again.
In an age where some of us are moving towards a post-perpetually online era, we might need to reframe for ourselves why and who we’re making art for. Your art has real value whether you get two likes or 2,000. Your art has value even if you don’t make a single dime off your work. It still has value whether you share it or not.
Why? Because it has value to your most important audience: yourself.
That has to be enough.
Related reading
A bunch of links & recs
To read:
How to sleep when you’re a perfectionist. As a high achiever, your problem-solving skills can backfire at night. You need a different way to beat insomnia. (Psyche)
Part of why I missed writing this newsletter last week (sorry!) is because I’ve been struggling hard with insomnia lately. That and a flareup of some chronic illness/pain. Sometimes I do really feel like my body is falling apart.Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet. A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life. (The Guardian)
“We inhabit the internet in an odd, paradoxical state. It is everywhere, available whenever we desire it, like the air we breathe. This permits us to forget not only its materiality – bottomless quantities of metals and plastics poured and cast into wires, routers, datacentres, servers, towers and repeaters – but also its centrality in our lives.”
Hard pass. Cold brew. Dad bod. Merriam-Webster adds over 5,000 words to ‘Collegiate’ dictionary (AP News)
I have no idea how there are even 5,000 new words. What is a definition of a word anyway? “Dad bod” is really a word?What gives young people hope in times of crisis? From Zohran Mamdani, working with children to ‘pure delusion’ – we spoke to young people about what is keeping them hopeful as the world unravels. (Dazed)
“So much of what we are taught as children has turned out to be untrue: that good defeats evil, that human life is valued, that truth will prevail against all odds.” I needed to read something like this today. Maybe I need to borrow one from the youngsters and be a little more delulu.I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong. Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact. (Wired)
I’m more and more convinced that the world is not run by politicians, but by billionaires.
To watch
Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines (The Ezra Klein Show)
A few newsletters back I linked to a recent Klein podcast as one to watch. Immediately after, he wrote a rather divisive opinion piece about Kirk’s assassination which…I did not agree with. Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates responded with harsh criticism in Vanity Fair. Here, as an invited guest on his show, the two men hash it out. The moral clarity that Coates brings to the conversation made it painfully obvious that the two were still not quite on the same page.Why "intentional amateurism" is so powerful for parents of young adults (Parents of Adults)
and . I like the phrase “intentional amateurism” and what it represents. Karen explains something that I did not know: the etymology of amateur is “one who loves.”
Enjoyed this conversation between
An exhibition I recently saw in NYC:
Edward Burtynsky The Great Acceleration (ICP)
I’m a broken record every time I say this about exhibitions I want to share, but these mid-res photos can’t capture just how mind-boggling Edward Burtynsky’s photographs are. There is the obvious, which is the striking visual impact of human presence on our natural environments. It’s also incredible how detailed his photographs are, and this can’t be experienced unless you’re studying these images in person. At close range, the rich textures of his landscapes appear painterly. If you ever have the opportunity to see Burtynsky’s work in person, please go.
A book I’m reading (heads up, a bookshop.org affiliate link):
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (Hwang Bo-reum)
I admit I was drawn in by the cozy illustrated cover. A national bestseller from South Korea that’s been recently translated into English, this charming novel is about a burnt out career woman who follows her dream of opening a bookstore (I mean really, who doesn't?). A warm, slice-of-life read. I wouldn’t say it’s a page turner with a complicated plot or character development, but if you’re looking for a comforting story that slowly unfolds and captures the quiet atmosphere of a neighborhood bookshop, you might like this.
To make and eat:
We spotted our first delicata squash at the farmers market. It’s officially Fall. Our favorite way to eat it these days is to slice the squash into half moon rounds, seeds removed, and roast it into a sheetpan dinner with leafy green veggies like kale and generous chunks of feta. A similar recipe here (Food 52)
“To make art that does not exist for an audience. To fight the need to feel validated. To fight the desire to even be seen.” An ongoing battle for me too. I do share a lot of my art but I keep a bit of it just for my eyes. It’s a struggle though because as a recovering girl boss I always feel like everything has to become a business. So far I’ve kept my art mostly a hobby,
This is a powerful post. Thank you for sharing. I think the truth of ‘being an artist’ (or musician or any other creative calling) is precisely found in doing it because you have no choice. You have to do it. And for whatever reason - comment, catharsis, meditation, habit, process over product etc. Audiences do validate. But they can lead to temptation. I’m inspired to write more about this myself now - I’m new to Substack but find the whole experience really positive overall.