“Only in Your Sunday Best” and Professionalism and Perfectionism in the Artistic World

The world is so oversaturated in content. For anything to be seen, it needs to be new, fresh, exciting, or any number of other buzz words. In the digital world, everything vies for even a few seconds of your attention. As a consumer, it is exhausting. As a producer of content, it is overwhelming. There is a constant need to pump out new content in a continual stream to even have a hope at reaching new viewers who might like what you are sharing with the world. This unending wheel of competition can take a toll on mental health, creativity, productivity, etc. Plenty have seen this and warned about it. And I made the mistake of thinking I was above it.

In the two years since graduating college, I have been discouraged by the amount of art I have produced. To date, I have only completed a handful paintings. For a “professional” artist, that is unacceptable. This thought process spiraled me downward into an unproductive low. It took someone else to point out to my mistake to me.

Since graduation, I completed Inktober for the first time. (Inktober is a challenge started by artist Jake Parker, encouraging artists to draw and post a new ink drawing daily for the month of October. Learn more about it here: inktober.com). That is 31 drawings. This past year, I completed half of Inktober. Another 14 or so drawings. In fact, I have drawn quite a few other works. Yet, I did not even take these works into consideration when totaling my artistic achievements, despite the fact that I spent hours on each one. Why?

The mindset of perfectionism is woven into artistic culture and only expounded by higher education in art. I have seen many young artists, myself included, fall into this mindset and have it encouraged by peers and mentors. Sketches, works in progress, and new experiments are dismissed. They are never to be posted and celebrated. Only the finished product is. They aren’t as good as your other work, so they should not be seen. You should always be improving and perfecting, always producing only the best of the best.

Now, while it is good to strive for improvement, it is ridiculous to expect it as a consistent baseline. To learn and grow, you have to allow grace for mistakes. You have to allow room for experimentation. You have to allow space for failure. Why is it taboo to share about this? Couldn’t sharing mistakes and challenges with each other lead to collective growth and improvement? Yet, it is frowned upon to share your artistic process.

In college, I was known as a painter. In college, every piece had to be big, complete, new, fresh, exciting, etc. In college, my ink drawings were not ok to submit for a grade because ink was outside of the materials provided. But now? Who cares! I should be able to define what art is professional. I should be able to be proud of my ink drawings. I should be able to show what I have created, no matter how small and different the recent pieces have been. That is a sign of growth. I am not just a painter. I am an artist. I draw. I use ink. I use paint. I honestly use whatever materials I can get my hands on (I am currently using a broken bookcase as canvases). I can define my artistic persona however I want.

I want to encourage other artists to share, no matter what. Share the thought process behind your work. Share your incomplete projects. Share your sketches. Encourage each other. Offer suggestions to each other. We can make it a community, not a competition. We can redefine professionalism in the art world. Post anything you are creating in celebration of the accomplishment that you created (which is not an easy thing to do!). Stop self-deprecating and under appreciating your work, just because you think it is not your “Sunday best”. We can always improve and be better, but it is a journey to get there and I want to see your journey. Some of the most famous artist are the ones who ignored the unspoken “rules” of the day and plowed forward with their own artistic goals, in spite of criticism. May we all follow in their footsteps, boldly denouncing a need for perfectionism and instead glorifying growth in all its messy, choppy stages of ups and downs.