Pearls from artists* # 722

Barbara attending Carnival in Oruro, Bolivia!

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on

One of the most insidious kinds of pressure to which an artist can succumb is the pressure to be accessible. Well-meaning advisors may tell you that x is acceptable, marketable, popular and wealthy. But if you alter your work to be more x-ish, people will spot it as inauthentic; it will not be heartfelt because it does not originate in your own being. By all means develop and revise your work to communicate more and more clearly; but if you alter one word in order to please some imagined market “out there,” the integrity and originality of everything you do is at risk. You get off the sure base of what you really know and are. Whereas if you create your own material in your own way, developing art work that is more and more authentically yours, people will spot it as genuine. In resisting the temptation to accessibility, you are creating a genuine space and living in it.

Stephen Nachmanovitch in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art

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