I’m frustrated with the role that dissatisfaction plays in my life, and I’m also dissatisfied with frustration. I’ve been trying to… optimize. Trying to figure out a particular life goal and to aim towards it, to sort out which contradictory desires and impulses should take priority. What I want, roughly speaking, is to create things, to make art which I can be proud of, which is considered valuable and enjoyable on its own merits, and to be able to survive while doing so. These don’t seem like especially ambitious goals, described like that, but they’re difficult to achieve. Difficult for me, at any rate.
Roughly, this goal can be broken up into two components: One, make good art. Two, learn how to survive off of the art I make. I keep on running face first into a conflict, though: The main engine by which I can improve my art, refine my technique, expand my vision, is dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is a symptom of being able to envision better things, of being able to imagine a better creation than I can currently manage. If I stop being dissatisfied with my work, that means I’ve stopped seeing its flaws, or have come to accept them as inevitable – so how, then, can I seek to work past them, to make something tomorrow better than what I’ve made today? At the same time, I have to believe that my work is good and worthy if I want to sell it, at least to feel that I can do so ethically – I mean, how can I sell something if I know it’s not the best version of what I can make?
Before I go on: Yes, I know, both of these are ridiculous. We improve at our art whether we want to or not, the more we practice, regardless of satisfaction. I suppose, though, if you’re satisfied with your results, you end up practicing creating the same results but better and more efficiently, rather than working to produce new and exciting results. Whether you push yourself or don’t changes what skill you’re actually practicing – the difference between craftsmanship and artistry, maybe. I also know that work, that art, is always worth selling if it’s worth sharing, amateur and student work just as much as professional work, because human passion and labor and skill was put into it – though, still, I don’t want to burn my morale down by putting out sub-optimal work and having it rejected. I go back and forth between thoughts like this, arguing with myself, for weeks at a time.
Okay.
What do I do? Do I make up my mind just to practice without intent, and hope that I don’t stagnate into a gutter of repetitive work? Do I keep pushing myself to expand and feel perennially unhappy with my limitations? Do I just go and try to sell whatever work I can however I can, and assume that whatever people show themselves willing to pay is what i should take? Do I wait until I can be perfectly proud, certain that one day my work can stand amongst the best out there? Some sort of balance has to be found, but I haven’t found it – or, at least, not a balance fine enough that it’s satisfying for long.
Multiply this argument by three or four or five, one for every medium I have tried or am trying to build proficiency in, and you have a sense of what it’s like to live in my head for a day.
I know your questions are largely hypothetical. Nevertheless:
It seems to me that accepting a work’s flaws as an important element of that work are a part of the solution here. A work will never be the best it can be when you evaluate it objectively, like a test. Whereas if you look at it subjectively, as a product of its time and situation, the flaws become a vital part of any piece.
Yeah, and that’s something that I’ve also wanted to write about — I was saying a while back that what we call the artist’s style are the flaws that they were never willing or able to fix. So I get that idea, yeah, but it’s not one I can effectively communicate to myself in the moment to make myself satisfied with a piece. And, regardless, struggling against those flaws and limitations is also necessary to expand one’s scope as an artist, rather than make the same things over and over. Or maybe it isn’t! I don’t know!