As a designer and artist I (my work,actually) have, through education and practice, been subject to years of highly subjective, deeply critical and sometimes downright nasty commentary. By now, having suffered through that gauntlet of professors, clients and random passers by, I have grown a pretty thick skin. If you can't take some abuse (remember, it's aimed at the work, not you), you just shouldn't pursue a creatively focused career. Otherwise you'll end up like countless other creative types before you and just go fucking nuts, shooting your ashes out of a cannon, cutting off your ear or hopefully at least coming up with a more creative way "out".
For the past several years I seem to periodically go through a cycle where I need to feel creatively productive. This is due in large part to this most common of occurences. Guy goes to (insert type of schooling here), he gets really good at what he does, he gets a good job, works hard, management says 'heck, if he's that good on his own, maybe he can lead an army of his clones', guy then moves into management. Hopefully he gets good at that too, otherwise he gets canned. Remember, you can't get promoted back to what you were originally good at if it doesn't work out. So, what happens in this process is that eventually you are no longer doing what you love and instead you are trying to train monkeys to be like you. Not fun...mostly. To help you reconcile this, they give you bigger paychecks. That doesn't suck. The thing though is that there is a creative form of expression that's lost. I imagine it's kind of like making it big as a musician, where the charm that got you there is what they want to strip from you to make you appeal to a broader audience. My audience is small.
I was getting to a point, being the need to still have a creative outlet. Those last several years I was talking about, I have been (when motivated) painting. This isn't something that I do for long stretches of time. It sort of goes in waves, say like every 2 years I'll get in a groove for a few months and crank a bunch of stuff out. Then something in my house breaks or I get really busy or there's a sale at Barney's and I fall off the creative wagon. It's a bit manic, but longer term. I'd like to do this more often. Paint that is, not stop and start like some crappy tv you bought at a thrift store because it was a sweet deal. Now, if I had a benefactor or sugar mama I could have been a painter full time. Granted I'd get bored and take breaks from time to time, we are flaky us creative types, are we not? As it stands, I squeeze a few hours in here and there between errands, chores, socializing, etc. Seems though, when I finally get all the shitty work out of my system, I have to stop.
I come from a family of artist, designers and architects. We can take critcism well, but also like to give it. Anyway, a funny thing happened yesterday and it started something like this:
My dad, who is a brilliant man (an accomplished architect, urban planner and economist, not to mention a gifted artist to boot) came by to see the work I have been doing during my most recent period "on". I have a show coming up next month and I thought I could use the feedback. My studio is in my basement, so I brought a couple pieces upstairs for better lighting then took dad downstairs to see the rest of my work. We (more like he) probably spent about an hour all told going through each of 10 or 12 paintings. It started with the usual (but uncomfortable), "hmmmm". Then in detail, my dad with his still strong accent (even after 35 years), begins to critique my work to pieces. Being a proffesor , he's trained to inflict crushing blows with minimal effort. The overall feeling was a sort of 'better learn how to walk before you try to run'.
Funny thing is that after the weeks of my friends and my wife all saying that my work was great, I really just wanted a real opinion and some tough love frankly. You could say I asked for it.
What I find most interesting about yesterday's events though is that, at this point in my life and career, I can have my work (or anything else for that matter) torn to shreds and I'll just brush it off. For some reason though, and I imagine no matter how old you get, the criticism our parents give us always seems to sting a bit longer.
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