telophase | (no subject)

From the Muddy Colors art and artists blog: Joy and Play at Work

Look unless you’ve grown up in an art household or on an island of painters, you’ve been made to feel that drawing and painting is never more than an act of play, or distraction from “real” work. Even I sometimes snidely refer to myself as “still waiting to get a real job”. But as those of us trying to build an art life and make a go at it in some professional capacity know, it’s entirely the opposite. It’s work. The hardest work because it doesn’t just require the kind of physical stamina to execute the work, the late nights and hoofing it all over to try and find a wedge in the door, but it exhausts us deeper on almost every level. In art making we are confronted with a myriad of opportunities to be forced into the Thunderdome of our own egos, our deepest psychological foibles, and our fears. A long day at work for us can be exhausting on many levels. I know when I get back from a show or a con I am utterly drained to my tap root, and we’ve all had a terrific day in the studio that can leave us depleted. When you do this for a living that work just gets harder, not easier, even as you achieve a level of autonomy, the stakes increase, the need to not just climb the mountain but keep from being slid off it into irrelevancy explodes. All the more reason to find a locale for feeling pure joy wherever possible.