If I’m undergoing surgery, I want to know my surgeon has done the appropriate study and achieved the appropriate certificates so I don’t die under her knife. If I’m building a new house, I want to know my builder has gone through appropriate training and has the appropriate certificates to build my house so that it doesn’t burn down or collapse.
But, the thing is, I’ve never been asked for my certificate of art-making by any publisher, ever. It turns out we don’t need credentials for many jobs, really, especially creative work.
I don’t have a fine arts degree. I never went to an Illustration College or Art School. I still feel a sense of guilt about this. Imposter syndrome is real, for sure. I’ve pondered long and hard about whether I should attend art school in retrospect, just to get those credentials – that piece of paper that won’t necessarily improve my professional career options but may calm the angst I feel when I think about the legitimacy of the work I make and the platform on which I now work.
Reflecting upon my own journey to becoming a professional artist, the one thing it comes back to, at it’s most basic, is that I made the work I wanted to make, and then I told people about it. Yes, there’s an argument for the effect of strengths and talents, good timing, and all the privilege and luck that goes into being the sort of personality that sees opportunities instead of barriers. In the end, it wasn’t the credential I needed (no publisher has ever asked for me degree), it was the ability to overcome, or at least accept, fear.
Maybe that’s the only thing we need to learn as artists? Overcoming the fear of being judged for our work, the fear of failing against expectations (our own and others), the fear of being found out as a pretender. No credential or certificate will give us that. The only thing that does is practice. We just have to make the work, over and over again. Yes, it is scary. Almost debilitatingly so. But no one will die if we get it wrong, and we (and our world) stand to benefit immensely if we’re generous enough to give it a go, and we get it right sometimes.