It occurred to me today as I thumbed through my Instagram feed that there is so much amazing art and artists out there and thank god I don’t have to compete with those artists, because they are amazing and ‘far better than me’.
This is also something that I have to remind myself.
My standard, my benchmark, is ME. Is MY Best.
I can be INSPIRED by other art, and I am,
Daily.
I have been spending more time in my painting studio recently.
A Decision to ‘TRY SOMETHING NEW’
And to Explore something that I have been wanting to for a while, and so I am.
I have invested quite a bit of time in my life into painting, yet so have others, and this blog, this moment right now of me here writing is to remind myself and reinforce my understanding, awareness, and realization that I AM NOT COMPETING AGAINST OTHER ARTISTS or Other people for that matter.
I will never win that game, and I see a dimension of that game actually being unwinnable.
I am here to bring through my understanding that my approach to painting my ‘WHY’ as to why I am painting is specific to me.
My Approach is to Paint FOR ME, for my reasons,
to develop and grow FOR ME,
to Explore FOR ME.
And so as a person and artist I have learned and am learning how to push and motivate Myself and be Inspired and motivated by others without competing with others.
When I feel discouraged by looking at what others do, I see that this is an experience connected to competition and so when I feel this experience, and feel discouraged I can simply stop and breath and bring my awareness back to me and exhale in relief that I actually don’t have to compete with all of these other Brilliant Artists, and so now I can appreciate their incredible unique talent and expression and understand that we all have that, we just have to align to it.
This is an important lesson for me and it makes the whole painting process so much more fulfilling and less stressful honestly.
Interestingly as I continue to paint, the lessons I learn in the studio are as much about self awareness, self acceptance, and understanding Myself as they are about painting techniques.
It’s a dynamic composition of both inner and outer components.
I am here to remind myself every individual is UNIQUE and will connect with their audience because of their UNIQUE Expression, not because ‘they are better than someone else’.
I have recently began creating some abstract works…of which the world is in no shortage of – But MY Abstract works, Abstract works from Andrew Gable, can only come from ME…lol, so I have an advantage for this market, for this audience, because I am Andrew Gable and I have no competition. Actually, my competition is ME. Is ME deciding NOT TO ‘GO FOR IT’, or Not to Share, Express or LIVE.
The point here is to remember I am not actually competing against anyone.
I am just EXPRESSING and SHARING ME and not only this but I am PUSHING Myself to do this, to explore different ways to do this and CHALLENGEING MYSELF to go beyond my limitations and to REACH OUT and CONNECT with those who are ALIGNED with ME and what I am doing, sharing, living.
A Lesson I am Learning From the Studio of Life.
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1 thought on “Your Unique Advantage as an Artist…and a Person. – Lessons Learned From the Studio of Life.”
Awesome observations. I see a lot of (especially young) artists struggle with that point of competition. Maybe it has to do with the world and everything being compressed into that point of the next golden voice or whatever X factor label has to be attached to a being in order to make it into some compartment in the heads of some target audience. A symbol of succes! My redline of artists through the ages have been examples of creativity able to merge these perspectives with their own unique vocabulary and thus able to express themselves as themselves. In that sense artists do more inner work from the get go, maybe without being aware of it at first. But the process more or less has this side effect of becoming ever more aware of who you are in what you are expressing because that’s what you are trying to do in your work. Making it work so to speak. Schoolbooks and schooling have the opposite effect from my perspective thus when the moment comes the shock of seeing what has to be unlearned is massive.
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