Mestiso Manifesto #4

Let me just preface this post, by mentioning that there are a lot of things on my mind at the moment, which may be contributing to the stress spiral I’m floating within. These include; dwindling redundancy money, the difficulties and emotions around returning to work as a designer, low morale as an artist, and a general sense of inadequacy towards my arts career and practice. This post might be a bit emo, so strap yourselves in.

This week I’ve been struggling a lot. The amount of hats I’ve had to wear as an artist this week has been challenging to say the least. There are so many things I need to learn and do that have taken time away from painting. Knowing what to prioritise and when has been very disorienting. As a designer I’m used to working in an ever shifting and chaotic environment, but I’m struggling adjusting to it in the context of my arts practice. Mostly because I don’t have the knowledge and experience. My week has felt very unproductive and my studio time has been the lowest since I’ve had full-time hours available to me.

I haven’t made much effort to make my art accessible for sale outside of an exhibition, so I’m in the process of creating online storefronts to sell my work (still deciding where and how). I’m really struggling with photographing the work properly and also directing traffic to whatever storefronts I create when I have such a low follower count on social media. I’ve been unsuccessfully taking pictures, following a rabbit hole of unhelpful tutorials and feeling very lost with developing my social media presence, especially when a lot of my peers have much higher engagement and followers than I do. The whole project has been overwhelming as well as frustrating. It’s made me avoidant of the studio and fed into my insecurities not only as an artist, but as a person. Queue the dramatic artist meltdown scene.

Another task that’s making me uneasy is that I have to create a promotional video of myself and my practice for my solo show in January. The general discomfort I have with my own physicality as well as presenting myself on camera is making me a bit anxious. I don’t think I even really know who I am as an artist as I’ve always hidden behind my artwork. Regardless, I feel like it would be good for me, whatever the end product.

In an ideal world, I would be able to delegate a lot of these tasks to a professional. Particularly with the photography which is my hell dimension. But as someone with literally no income, I’m not in a position to invest in people. Which means I have to invest in myself with what I have available to me. The learning curve is dragging out my time drastically, and time is something I don’t have much of with the prospect of returning to designer life. A prospect I’m not particularly looking forward to considering my history as a designer.

I think there’s a sense of disappointment in myself as well, that this opportunity to invest in my practice full-time has failed and was fruitless. Perhaps I lack what it takes to be a full-time artist, or maybe my work isn’t good enough. I feel very broken both as an artist and a designer.

Because most of my attention has been put into the commerce side of my practice this week (as well as indulging in in my feelings), the most painting I’ve done is re-painting the edges of a work that fell off my shelf. Maybe I threw it, I haven’t decided yet.

Despite this, I have been able to get some non-painting related tasks done which include applications for; a studio program, arts grant, a couple of exhibition opportunities and a commission project.

I think maybe it would be good for me to just to have a self-care weekend so that I can approach things fresh again on Monday. Especially since I’m feeling a bit fragile. You can all play tiny violins for me now.