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Am I An Artist?

This is one of many questions that have haunted me for years. I even thought about it a few days ago: Am I an artist?

There's a well-known term for this line of thinking - Imposter Syndrome. Feeling that you are not good enough despite having a body of work that makes it clearly evident that you are not a fraud. 

I took to rationalizing my pessimism even further. So I asked myself: Am I an Artist or am I a really good technician? Am I being original and authentic in my creative self-expression or am I cherry-picking aesthetic elements from existing creative works of established artists?

Thoughts like these have crippled my creative projects time and time again. It has hindered me from even attempting to materialize weird ideas or even sensible concepts. 

Is it even possible to be original at all?

Are we all remixing copies of copies and taking credit for it? Even though the originality of our creative expression is up for debate, I do believe that we can be truly authentic in our emotional expression. Being aware of one's own internal emotional space, and trying to understand this personal space on a deeper level is a game changer for an artist. This allows you to understand your subjective reality in a way that the outside world might never be able to perceive.

A hiccup that might hinder your creative process midway is facing the reality that your technical abilities do not match the quality of your idea or vision at a particular point in time. In most cases, especially if you are a beginner, you will not be able to produce works that even remotely represent your ideas or emotions. This will be disheartening to you. 

But the thing about creative expression is that you don't have to render out every single art piece of yours in 4k resolution every single time. You don't have to be technically flawless to spark someone's curiosity or affect someone emotionally. You will do just fine with wonky, scribbly, or lo-fi creations and might even make a better intellectual or emotional impact than a photorealistic painter.


If you asked me to give you one thing that you could take away from this thought journaling of mine, it would be: Try to understand that not everyone might be capable of understanding or connecting with your subjective space like you can…

We can try our best to convey it in a way that could be understood by another conscious being but without compromising the essence of our creative expression. Your subjective space is a collection of your personality, past experiences, intelligence, emotional landscape, core desires, likes and dislikes, and much more. The greatest service you can do for your soul is to try to empathize with your own subjective space. Understand what it was yesterday, what it is today, and what it could be tomorrow. See things for what they truly are. Then dream about what could be.


I am less burdened today.

I am beginning to understand that not everyone might be able to feel the way I feel and think the way I think. Not everyone will be able to understand my emotional space like I do. Not everyone will be capable of meeting me with a level of depth that would fulfill my soul. What moves my soul intellectually and emotionally might be boring or indifferent to another person. And that's just how it's going to be. I cannot afford to let this limit my creative self-expression. 

Fear of being ridiculed is what stops most of us from expressing our authentic selves through our artistic creations. Authentic expression requires a meaningful degree of vulnerability and the more sensitive you are as an individual, the more difficult your creative process will be. Add arbitrary social standards of success and failure on top of this and the instant judgement that comes with it and creating becomes a nightmare.

Think of it like this... Even if you tried and failed, you will have experienced something entirely personal and unique to you. And these experiences will give you perspective and wisdom that will allow you to tell stories that only you can tell. May the universe allow you to tell stories that might inspire at least one aspiring human soul.

Signing off

- Paradox.

 

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