My artistic practice makes me want to cry, because I feel like I can never be soft. I want to be seen as human. I don’t want to suffer through overstepping my boundaries and pushing my body for a greater cause. Seeing my art as a calling makes me want to cry.
My artistic practice makes me want to cry because it is more than a 24/7. My endless search makes me want to cry. I don’t want to sacrifice myself. I do not want to do care work for a world of outsiders.
I don’t want to capitalize on creating art. Capitalizing art makes me want to cry. Doing commissions makes me want to cry.
Being financially unstable makes me want to cry. Three days ago I read: an artist without funding is no artist. I don’t want to be discovered by the art world.
Taking trains for hours makes me want to cry. Meeting all the people I need to meet makes me want to cry.
My artistic practice makes me want to cry because I have to do everything myself. I have to be responsible for everything all the time. And sometimes I don’t want to know how to fix things besides myself. I Don’t want to be my own production firm. I don’t want to manage myself.
Surviving makes me want to cry.
One reply on “My artistic practice makes me want to cry ( a manifesto in practice and progress )”
I’m in love with making art so deeply, it makes me cry. It makes me cry how I have to spend most of my life and energy in a job that has nothing to do with this. The grief I feel for neglecting my artistic practice makes me cry. I miss it so much. And I refuse to burn myself out trying to do both or sell myself as a business. So I spend my life working a job that dulls my heart and that makes me cry. I don’t know how to get myself out of this, or I choose to stay in this artless situation thinking it’s okay for now. And yet it makes me cry. It feels like heartbreak.