What Does an Artist Do All Day?

 The early morning sun of a new day lights gently upon the shoulder of the slumbering artist as she awakens from her peaceful sleep with a smile and a heart full of gratitude and joy. Happy birds flutter in through the open door with cheerful chirps and begin to select her wardrobe carrying a gayly patterned dress to her. She smiles warmly and spins around with glee! “Thank you, sweet birds of the forest!”, she exclaims. As she twirls and prances around her room and towards her brightly lit sparkly clean art studio she wonders how she ever could be so lucky………………….

vinyl scratch…………….

I don’t know about you, but this artist has not yet had the forest animals smile and dance around the room with her.

A typical day for me begins usually at 5am with my alarm sounding and quickly followed by two more
alarms with four soft feet and deep purrs nudging me awake so they can enjoy their First breakfast quickly followed by a snack of dental crunchies. This spring, I’ve made the commitment to get outside first thing and walk. It’s a brief 20 minute jaunt that includes a forest experience that wakes up my head with the help of a playlist listened to through headphones to drown out the traffic noise.   Back home I prepare a coffee or tea and head upstairs to the studio to check emails and decide what will be my morning muse with paint and brush.

I paint for a few hours and clean up to prepare for my graphic design clients who send me their needs to my email each day. If the day is slow I sprinkle in more art making. Or I work on my social media channels. Or update my website, edit videos for the web series, apply for grants or art shows and galleries.

I do have a loose daily schedule which I keep so I can insert things as they come up such as dropping off or picking up artwork at galleries or for buyers. I learned pretty quickly that when you are self employed you can’t have an air-tight schedule because things happen that insert themselves into the schedule and if I fret over not getting the “list” done that day it only sets me up for a night of sleeplessness. Letting go of expectations, being resilient, and being open to the ebb and flow of a day are important to managing my art practice.

Not everything will work out the way I “planned”. I still find myself occasionally romanticising over an upcoming art show or exhibition not unlike our imaginary artist and her forest friends, picturing my artwork flying off the walls into the hands of new owners. I need to believe in myself, but I also need to understand the reality of this concrete world. There’s often no real answer to why one show or exhibit is a success and another a flop.  So, part of the work that I do as an artist is inside work. Without the inside work I become fragile and unhappy and frantic.

What does the inside work look like? I’ve learned to follow my heart. Each time I pick up my brush its like I’m beginning a new journey. The work I am most proud of came from a place where love lives. I feel awe when I look around at nature. Everything about it enchants me and makes me curious. I walk though the same forest almost daily and its never boring or the same. So, my art is never the same. It ebbs and flows. When I create something that has meaning to me its always a joyful experience. And that joy comes through when others view the work.

The second part of the inside work I must do as an artist is to become unaffected by the opinions and well-meaning advice of others.  For me as an artist, putting my work “out there” in the public eye is allow myself to be vulnerable and exposed to the opinions of people who view and experience the work.  A synonym to the word exhibit is “reveal”. Artists reveal not only the physical work they have created but also the thinking and emotion behind the work. Many artists like me, are introverted people who prefer mostly solitary days so the prospect of putting out our most intimate thoughts and feelings into a public space can be intimidating at best. Therefore, as an artist I need to steel myself against naysayers by understanding myself better. And I achieve this by creating art. Each new work brings me more understanding and acceptance of my own self. So, part of what I do all day includes inside work.

My days are never the same two days in a row. Each day could include art making, graphic design work, self-care, household chores, caring for pets or family, filling out applications for grants, shows, exhibitions or markets, working on social media and my website, managing admin tasks such as bookkeeping, paying bills, ordering supplies, teaching art students, going to art group meetings, planning, and organizing tasks for groups I manage or belong to and of course communicating with buyers.

The work I do as an artist is my lifestyle. It permeates everything I do in a day. It affects how I see the world around me and the world around me affects the art I create. There is no 9 to 5 when you decide to create a life as an artist. And for me, that is the most rewarding thing because it means my work becomes my life. The inside stuff will continue throughout my lifetime. We are evolving beings just like nature that surrounds us. We ebb and flow in a dance that is uniquely our own. This is what artists do all day.