Get a different take on why it's so difficult to get your art out there (video)

You love creating.  You’re starting to enjoy revealing your work to world.  You’re wanting to make a go of this ‘art thing’ you’ve embarked upon.

But, maybe people don’t resonate with your work they way you thought they would. Maybe your work is a little different from everything else out there and you’re finding people a bit stand off-ish, or just downright negative.

This isn’t to say all feedback and comments about our work are simple negativity to bring you down but there will be a number of people who don’t get your work and some will be more vocal about it than others.

When others don't resonate with our work

In my experience, when people don’t like or understand or resonate with my work, they don’t say anything or interact in anyway. Just because they haven’t interacted doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the rejection of it. I don’t need someone to say they hate my work for me to feel the rejection in the air.

I started to observe the people around me more closely when I offered up a new artwork for their viewing. I love working with abstract pieces and when I offered up a new abstract, people around me would often react with uncertainty at first. When I offered up a landscape or something more relatable than an abstract , there was less uncertainty in their position on my work.

Then, I remembered when the kids were little. Offering a new food to a toddler usually resulted in complete rejection of the food, even after it had been tasted. It was an instinct. If we’re not sure about something new, best be safe and not try it. I noticed that this was happening with my art too. People who weren’t sure of it, couldn’t quite relate to it, were not ready to try it, wrote the artwork off as ‘I don’t like it’.

Building Art Self-Esteem

A big part of my journey with my self esteem with art has been to keep a new artwork up in the house until I’ve made my peace with it. What do I mean by 'made my peace'? Well, this is where I don't have any emotional charge about it either way. Not loving or disliking it. 

What I've noticed is the longer I keep the artwork on the wall, the more my family becomes used to it and what often started with “I’m not sure I like it” would often become “I can see what you’re doing here”, or “I like that one” .

A big key is making peace with my work and releasing any emotional charge / attachment to it where I'm not looking for approval or disapproval. I'm content with it as it is, whether it's finished or not. It's a simple thing but not necessarily easy to do.

How do you make peace with your own art?

How available is your work for others to view, interact with?

In this video, I share how making the work available for others who love and support me to view is a big part of the process of releasing attachments for me. It may or may not work for you.

Find what works and keep getting your work out there.

Keep building relationships with other artists and art lovers.

Keep an open door for the those that really resonate with your work and let them find you!

Just keep going!

Watch the entire unscripted, unrehearsed video here.

Video Transcript (Adapted)

Hi, Janet here and I wanted to talk to you today about getting your art out there and looking at rejection from a different perspective.

I know as a mum when you’ve got little kids, little toddlers and you put something new in front of them, food wise, because they’re uncertain, they’re not sure the first reaction, very instinctively is to not like it. I don’t want it. I don’t want to try it. They put it in their mouth for a second and.. nup – I don’t like it.

 But what I discovered eventually was that you need to put it in front of them, they need to taste it a bunch of times. I’ve heard all sorts of numbers on this… 17 times, 42 times but it’s definitely more than 2 or 3 times.

 I think with our art, it can be a bit the same. I’ll put something out that might be a bit quirky, a bit different, people don’t know me and the first reaction is often, I’m not sure, I don’t really know if I like this, and that’s fine. It’s a natural response.

It’s been really helpful having the toddler example for me because then I’m like “well I don’t need to take that personally, they are just looking at this for the first time”.

 So, I figure the more times I get my work out there, the more times people see it, might not even be the same people seeing it but it could be the same sort of group of people seeing it. It’s encouraging for me to keep getting it out there, for people to keep getting an idea of what my work’s about, what I’m about and develop a relationship because I do feel with a lot of people when there’s something new, someone they don’t know, often a first reaction is to be cautious which is a natural survival thing that we still do.

So, I’m hoping that this helps with you getting your art out there and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that aren’t really going to resonate with your work, we want to keep looking for those people but hopefully this encourages you to keep putting your work out there, keep putting it in front of people.

It’s not about us (artists) at the end of the day, sometimes people just need time to warm up to us.

Hope this is helpful and I’ll see you next time