Do I need an audience to make art?

I Need a Reason to Make Art

Confession: I cannot seem to make art simply for the sake of making art.

I believe, deep in my soul, that making art is good for us—not only because we can create things of beauty, but because the process of making is transformative.

I teach this. I believe it. Deeply.

And yet, as an artist, many years into being a visual artist, I cannot make a painting without a goal.

I need either students depending on me or to be making art for a commission, where someone has asked me to make a picture for a specific wall.

I need a deadline, a purpose, or a reason for the art to exist. And I have always been this way—I thrive on expectations. This is why I have excelled at taking classes throughout my life and always love imagining my next learning adventure.

Maybe this is a good thing, and it’s time to embrace it. And maybe you share this struggle and need to free yourself from the feeling that you’re somehow not good enough.

Teaching art has always felt like a calling, and making art needed for one of my classes feels easy, fun, and effortless. In this context, my art is for the purpose of serving others

I come alive when I work with and for other people.

Surrounded by others, I feel my zippy energy unleashed. My zeal, urgency, and squirrely mind suddenly have somewhere to go. I love the back-and-forth of teaching—the questions, the discoveries, the shared momentum.

When I am serving others, I feel timeless, free, and fully myself.

This explains a lot about my life. It explains why I love directing and rehearsing plays, especially the early discovery and staging process. It may also explain why the romantic image of the artist alone in her studio has never worked for me, despite my amazingly perfectly appointed and smack-dab-ideally located studios.

Put me alone in one of the beautiful studio settings with nothing but time and great curated art supplies, and I feel dead, stuck, with no energy at all.

And guilty.

I do all the requisite sanctioned things—put on my hecka fabulous Spotify playlist and jack up the volume, revisit my powerful vision boards—but it doesn’t work.

Not unless I have a clear goal—a class to make art for, a video to record for an educational purpose, or a specific person to give a painting to. I need the “other” to make art.

That is the confession.

I do not (successfully) make art alone

Maybe it matters because I might not be the only person who feels this way...

Can you relate to this?

My students often shyly confess to me that they, too, only feel engaged in a class setting, that they need the structure and me as their muse.

Those of us who are responding and nodding to this confession are not lacking in creativity, discipline, or commitment. We simply need a reason, a structure, or a social “other” to begin.

Folks, let's set aside the judgment, get real together, and dig into applying the insight.

I hope you’ll join me soon in my Encore Art community, making art together with prompts, goals, and heaps of joy.

Elizabeth