If not me, then who? If not now, when?

B̶e̶l̶i̶e̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶l̶f̶.̶ Knowing you can do it.

Mar 13, 2024

“If you believed in yourself, you’d be dangerous”

This is my adaptation of what my old mum used to say when I did something stupid (this happened often) “Steven, if you had a brain, you’d be dangerous”.

I had a flash of insight earlier this week. I realised that everything that has happened in my art career (so far) has come from inside me. As ole Jungy said, “Perception is projection”. The insight was beyond words, but what I saw was this:

Some people will like my art.
Some people will hate my art.
Some people are indifferent to my art.
Some people hate art.

Here’s the kicker…

But if I am not happy with my art, I won’t be as bothered to put myself out there in the world and share it. I’ll share it gingerly and hope hope hope someone will like it, which is exhausting.

My words don’t do justice to what I felt in a millisecond, so I’ll just have to keep talking around it…

I saw that my meekness around my work was a projection of how I thought others saw my work too. But that’s not true!

As I’ve been unwell, I’ve had time to reflect and do work on the other parts of my art practice. Emailing galleries, arranging exhibitions, finding ways to sell my art etc… On top of all of that, I’ve been updating my website and making it more ‘professional’. I had the idea to put together a video that I could put on my homepage, to give a visual taster of me and my work.

So, taa daa, here it is:

"If not me, then who? If not now, when?"

What do you think?

I actually really like it. As you know, I’m not the biggest plan-in-advance type of person. So I said to myself “Let’s get started and tweak it as we go” and that’s what came through.

Watching this back helped me believe in myself a little bit more.
Contacting over 100 galleries made me believe in myself a little bit more.
Making an art portfolio made me believe in myself a little bit more.
Creating a media page on my website made me believe in myself a little bit more.

I’m not too fond of the word believing, I prefer ‘knowing’.

believe
verb
accept that (something) is true, especially without proof.

Let’s take a look at knowing.

knowing
adjective
the state of being aware or informed.

Believing in yourself is a verb, but knowing is an adjective. I’m no English nerd (I got a D at school), but I prefer the latter. It feels more solid (Semantics? Maybe).

Think about this for a second.

What is your name?

__________

Do you believe this is your name or do you know this is your name for certain?

This my friend illustrates the difference a bit more clearly.

I do go off on tangents at times but I do get to a point…

Over the past few weeks, I feel more like a real artist. I look at artists who sell their work regularly, have wonderful exhibitions and are represented by good galleries.

I now know that I can have this too.

I’ll leave you with this quote…