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Myths about Art Careers

There are a number of myths about art careers which may be blocking your progress.

Do you believe that:

Art careers happen in a linear, orderly way?
You need to have all the right degrees and credentials?
You must be under 30 and live in New York in order to succeed?
You must develop a brand and follow a business plan?

I call these myths because they are false narratives that can become mental obstacles. If your art career isn’t happening in a linear, orderly way, you think you’re not making any progress. If you don’t have an MFA you imagine that everyone who does is ahead of you, and it’s too late to catch up. And thinking you need a brand and a business plan implies that artists have to turn themselves into someone else, and lose track of their own creative strengths.

How art careers actually happen is much more interesting and inspiring. They are organic rather than linear, and happen in unpredictable ways. They develop in stages, growing as you grow, as you experiment and take risks. Age & geographic restrictions have been turned upside down in the wide open virtual art world. Art careers are actually built on relationships with others combined with confidence in yourself and your work. Instead of developing a brand or a business plan, artists need to apply their own creativity to their careers.

How do you do this? Start by paying attention to moments of insight. Follow your intuition rather than logic, and use your visual imagination to see what might be possible. Try out “crazy ideas” that occur to you, especially if they build on your strengths. You can create the art career you’ve always wanted, even if it doesn’t yet exist.

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards

Surviving the Holidays

If you approach the holiday season with a certain amount of ambivalence, you’re not alone. We feel pressured to make our own real, fractured and complicated families into one Happy Family just in time for the season. We also feel sadness and loss at this time of year, with memories of people and dreams that are no longer part of our lives. Some of us just try to escape it all and stumble into the New Year.

Creative people struggle with these ambivalent feelings, since it’s your nature to absorb everything around you, large and small. You seem to have hundreds of tiny magnets just under your skin. Whether you’re overscheduled or feeling lonely, you need a way to navigate the holiday pressures. One method that seems to work is to keep asking yourself: what is the best use of my time right now?

I like the question because it makes you stop what you’re doing (or obsessing about not doing), and honor the moment you’re in. You slow down and pay attention to what you are actually thinking and feeling. Surviving the holidays means taking care of yourself.

Sometimes the best use of your time is to get organized, to make a list, to plan. At other times it’s to do something necessary but ordinary (get gas, buy milk, take a shower). But often, especially now, the best use of your time is to stop doing.

When you stop doing you open up new space around you. If you stay there long enough, you find out what’s really on your mind. Sometimes surprising possibilities begin to bubble up, including a real spirit of joy and gratitude.

So, what’s the best use of your time right now?

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards

New York Art Now

The New Museum’s 2021 Triennial, “Soft Water Hard Stone” includes 40 international artists (and collectives), a broad selection brought together across race, gender, and culture, taking its own diversity for granted. These artists break down boundaries, as they combine industrial and organic materials; they collapse the distinction between fine art and craft; they echo the surrealists by basing works on “ready-made” found objects.

The show’s title is based on the Brazilian proverb, “soft water on hard stone hits until it bores a hole.” Focused on forms of resistance, the exhibition’s politics are subtle. Meanings are grounded in the forms and materials and (sometimes) the titles of the works themselves. As the curators comment: “politics are embedded rather than exposed.” The works are complex, multi-layered, personal, and slow to reveal their meanings. Here are two examples of how these artists work.

In “Nothing Further Beyond,” the Turkish artist Hera Buyuktasryan layers cleanly sliced pieces of carpet to create what looks like a showroom full of remnants. The artist, based in Istanbul, has said that carpeting creates a border between us and the coldness of the earth. Her stacked carpets look like bases of classical columns from the city’s ancient ruins, evoking layers of history and suggesting that borders themselves are really a fiction.

The Greek artist Iris Touliatou uses abandoned lighting fixtures she finds in offices in Athens. Her title, “Still Not Over You” suggests a powerful personal inspiration for the work, yet it looks like a minimalist sculpture. The light bulbs go on and off, so while the work seems to be dying it keeps sparking back to life. The metaphor applies to both the exhibition’s theme and her own regrets.

Throughout this remarkable exhibition artists mine their personal experiences to examine contemporary issues.

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards

Making Art is a Real Job

How do you find enough time for your art practice? Our lives are filled with demands, pressures, and commitments to others that seem more important than our own good intentions. We all get lost in the everyday.

For artists this dilemma is especially powerful, because people think you don’t have a “real job” so you must have lots of extra time to volunteer for worthy projects. Then you internalize their assumptions and say YES to everything but your own practice. Over time you lose track of your artist self.

We know that making art requires time and space and mental freedom. You often need to “waste” time being creative, since the process of making art sometimes looks a lot like doing nothing. You play with materials, you reorganize your studio, you stare out the window as you think about ideas for new work. If you allow yourself this freedom you will eventually find your way forward.

Making art requires patience and commitment. After failures and disappointments, you need time to recover. You begin, and then you begin again, as you grow and develop. But to sustain this creative freedom, you also need its opposite: structure and organization.

Think of your art practice as your real job. Show up every day. Put in the time even when you don’t want to. Have a plan for the week. Create a list of goals and keep it visible. Establish rules for your workplace as though it were a regular business. Maybe you don’t allow cell phones, or you cannot take private calls until lunchtime. Don’t be a mean boss to yourself, but develop working rules and structures that help you stay focused.

These are the left brain skills that right brained people need.

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards

Learn from Nature

Nature is the source of my favorite metaphors for how artists develop. If you’ve ever tried to cultivate a garden, or even keep pots on a windowsill alive, you know that growing things is a slow and often invisible process. It takes patience and thoughtful care. You plant bulbs in the Fall and then stare at that empty dirt forever before the first tiny signs of life appear.

Every artist’s career has those moments of staring at the dirt.

There are seasons and cycles and long fallow periods in nature’s growing process. It isn’t predictable, but you have to pay attention to what growing things need. You move a pot into the sun, you add water or special nutrients, and sometimes you repot a plant that has outgrown its container.

Ask yourself, “what do I need in order to thrive?” Especially when you are stuck, or at a plateau, imagine yourself lacking basic nutrients like food, water, or sun. You might need more space or time or greater support from your community. You might need to build confidence in yourself and your work. You might need to learn new skills.

In order to grow, you also have to let things go. Flowering plants have to be pruned in order to bloom again. Gardeners cut off dead branches, they “deadhead” empty pods which divert energy away from new growth. Are you pouring resources and time into activities that no longer produce results?

Plants in pots can stop growing when their container becomes too small. Maybe your art practice is ready to grow larger, to push outside the boundaries or restrictions you’ve imposed.

Nature’s cycle of renewal is full of hope, and reminds us to look for the first green shoots of new growth.

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards

It’s Not Too Late

I just attended a solo exhibition of new work by the artist Phyllis Thelen, who turned 95 this year. While she has been an exhibiting artist all her life, her first solo museum show happened at the age of 87 and her first retrospective came at the age of 94. She keeps making new work that extends and deepens her central theme: “defending, protecting, and celebrating nature.”

Thelen’s success provides a useful reminder for the many mid-career artists who wonder if it too late to find their place, too late to become known or to achieve their goals as an artist. Making art can last you a lifetime, but it happens gradually, in stages, and moving forward takes incredible persistence and resilience. It also means thinking about the overall shape of your career.

There are times when you need to get ready, to prepare yourself for visibility. You get better at presenting your work, talking about it, and writing about it.

There are times when you need to grow your skills and knowledge. As a result of the pandemic the online courses for artists available now are remarkably diverse in terms of subject matter and quality. You can take advantage of all these offerings.

There are times when you need to build your confidence. To keep growing you have to experiment and take risks with your work, and you also face your own fears of failure and fears of success. You can create a supportive community to help you navigate these difficult challenges, so you don’t feel so alone.

At nearly every stage of your career, you have to become more comfortable being uncomfortable in order to grow.

We can look to our elder artists to see if the struggle is worth it.

~ Mary

Mary Edwards, Ph.D
Career & Life Coach for Artists
“Left Brain Skills for Right Brained People”
Instagram: coachingforartists.maryedwards