I’ve never really thought of a mission behind my business (bad bad business owner) but I didn’t think it felt right to write about it before I knew exactly what I stand for. Who am I kidding, I’m never going to know exactly what I stand for and that is the beauty of being an ever evolving and changing artist. I do have a much better idea of it now that I have been chasing and living my passion for a while now. This morning I read this article sent to me in an email by my best friend and it found the words that I could not.

“I wanted to be a constant reminder to the universe of what passion looks like. What it sounds like. What it feels like.”

For the longest time, I’ve been struggling with what the point of this all is. For me, art is at the deepest roots of who I am. Sometimes I look back and wish that I didn’t make my artistic talents into a business because there would be no stress or feelings of imperfections in my work because no one would see them and they wouldn’t matter. That is a fantasy for me now. Those are real thoughts but there isn’t a lot of truth to them. You see, confidence is a struggle of mine that is present in all parts my life. It is just one of those things that will always be there for me and a daily battle of telling myself I am good enough and deserving.

“Living with this danger requires a courage that takes two forms. First, people with passion have the courage to dig down and play with their issues. We all have certain core concerns and tender spots that preoccupy us through life. “

I fantasize often about having endless hours of my day to create, unplug, and not have any sort of feedback to validate my work. But, that would actually take away so much of my joy of creating things. So much of why I create is to share my vision with other people. Yes, it is filling this huge personal need for making something that didn’t exist before, but to me, that is empty if not shared.

“I suppose that people who live with passion start out with an especially intense desire to complete themselves. … But they often have a fervent curiosity about their inner natures and an unquenchable thirst to find some activity that they can pursue wholeheartedly, without reservation.”

Pursuing something wholeheartedly can be the most frustrating way to live your life. Trust me, I’m doing it. It is also the only way for me. It is like chasing after something that isn’t there. For me, there is no finish line and it will never be finished. I will never stop trying to quench what seems like an endless thirst to be creative. Being creative is just the beginning for me…that is such an abstract idea and means such different things to different people. Because I’m self taught, creativity means innovation and exploration to me. I want my creativity to be present in all parts of my life and business because it is what makes me most happy. If only I could see myself when I’m painting, bottle that up, and try to navigate my entire life with that passion. That’s what I want it to feel like.

Becoming okay with doing things differently is always something I’m working on  and it’s at the core of my business (currently struggling with it right now). I also recognize that being patient with myself and others is of great importance. People in this industry typically do things similar to each other. There are a lot of people that will tell you about curation and white space right now but that doesn’t work for me. I was seriously bending over backwards to take beautiful pictures of things that were not real. Creativity over curation works for me and if it takes people a second to understand that it’s more important for me to be true to myself than gravitate towards trends, that’s okay. I have always been more of a mess of colors than a perfectly put together white space anyway.

“They opt out of things that are repetitive, routine and deadening. There’s even sometimes a certain recklessness there, a willingness to throw their imperfect selves out into public view while not really thinking beforehand how people might react. “

xo-

qk