When all said and done, making art seems trivial, doesn’t it? Why should we spend time painting, or drawing, or performing when there are more important things we could be spending our time on? We could be working longer and harder to climb the career ladder or make more money. We could be spending more time doing repairs to our home, learning to cook better meals, or going to the gym to improve our physical health. We could be volunteering at the local seniors’ centre. We could be protesting on the streets about climate change or conflict. What gives us the right or privilege to spend our time making art?
One simple reason, you might say, is to make more money. Make things so you can sell them. A ‘side hustle’, if you will? Maybe, eventually, it’ll make enough money to support whatever lifestyle you’re comfortable with. Maybe it’ll give you enough to leave a job you don’t particular like or never really chose but ended up doing because that’s just the way life panned out. If the reason is to make more money though, the statistics aren’t in your favour; there’s a reason the cliche of the starving artist is, in fact, a cliche.
Even if you were able to make money from your art, then what you’re really doing is running your own business. So, the question becomes, do you want that responsibility? Making your own products? Marketing your own products? Chasing invoices? Collaborating with clients who are not happy with the work you produced and want it changed to a way that suits them because that’s what they paid for. Competing against humans (and artificially intelligent computers) for the work in the first place? For many who are considering making art, running a business is not what we’re looking for, either.
Maybe the making money thing is a proxy for what we’re really trying to work out – can something we make be of value to someone else? If we make something, and sell it for $50, then maybe what we’re making is good? If more than 1 person buys it, then maybe it’s really good? If this is what we’re looking for, what do we begin to believe when no one buys something we made?
If making extra money is the reason to begin making art, what happens when nobody buys?
For many of us, the world is a messy place. Overwhelmingly so. There are repairs to make to the home or the car. There is constant cooking and cleaning to be done, there is the need for exercise to improve one’s physical health. There are seniors who need the company of a volunteer. There is climate change and conflict to protest. There is a job we need to do to make ends meet. We need to make ends meet. Managing all this, day in and day out, is tiring. It’s enough to make one want to collapse on the couch and just veg in front of our favourite streaming service for the hour before bed that we get to ourselves so we can do it all again tomorrow.
But, what if we used that one hour a day in a different way? What if it wasn’t even every day? What if it was one hour a week? Might things… Could things… be different?
There are real barriers to prioritising art in our lives. Well, there was for me, anyway. But one day, I read Art and Fear by Ted Orland and David Bayles and I picked up a pencil for the first time in 20 years and made a few marks on some printer paper while I was vegetating in front of the TV one evening. Just 15 minutes. Two days later, I did it again, mostly because I wanted to fix what I drew two days before because I was so unhappy with it. Little did I know that the act of fixing what I did before became a decade-long exercise and it doesn’t look like stopping any time soon.
I can’t tell anyone why they should prioritise art in their lives – each person’s circumstances are far too different to make any generalisations and it’s something one needs to find one’s own path in. But, perhaps my testimony and journey can help.
For me, the reasons for making art are so important that I prioritise them above all the stuff I used to think was more important; the cooking, the cleaning, the caring, the protesting and so on. I know that I cook, and clean, and care for others and myself better if I’ve done a bit of drawing in the last few days. Since I started making art, I’m a better husband, a better son, I’m better at my ‘day job’, and I have more energy for when life gets rough. It is, in many ways, cheap therapy and a much stronger energy-giving activity than any gym membership or binge-watching session I’ve ever had.
So, why bother with making art? The only way to answer that question is to pick up a pencil, a brush, or whatever medium you can afford or have access to, and start making marks, for 15 minutes, just to see what happens.