Art Marketing Blog: Fair? Jealousy? Typical

Art Marketing Blog: Fair? Jealousy? Typical: One of the more irritating aspects of working in the visual arts in one particular divide I straddle.  My host institution (a fine art u...

It does annoy me when successful artists are criticised for either appropriation or for the act of being successful. In this article Banksy cred is called into question because of the above and because he has been absorbed by the mainstream art world. Is it jealousy that calls out against him? Banksy started as a street artist who innovated (some would say appropriated) the use of stencils in graffiti in his native Bristol. Nowadays he is a megastar of the art world and has works shown in galleries (gasp, shock, the horror!) as well on the streets. Banksy is criticised in the article for being able to fly around the world plying his grossly successful brand of graffiti and there are Banksy works 10 minutes walk from where I am right now. I'm not sure that Banksy is quite as alone in that as the "true" NY graffiti artists would have you believe. In and around Perth and its environs, we have at least 3 street pieces by French artist SPACE INVADER and I saw another in Melbourne a few years ago. Personally I have made or exhibited art in Oporto, London, Nottingham, Perth, Melbourne, New York, Trenton amongst other places, and I am definately not grossly successful. In reality, appropriation and its tangled skein of ethnic, gender and theological considerations and engendered politics is an unavoidable comfit that all artists must deal with at some point. I would ask that the NY based graffiti artists to grow up and start thinking outside of a "you have, me want" kind of attitude. You want to outdo Banksy? Don't bomb his pieces; go to Bristol and do a piece so outstanding and innovative that it melts Bristolian heads and makes them forget their errant son. Don't be a hater, be an innovator.

Dealing with depression as an artist

As an artist you will need to develop a thick skin. Regardless of what you do in the art world, whether you compose or paint or sculpt or engage in something more post-human or post-post-post-contemporary, then you will need to be able to formalise your ideas, take criticism, understand people and learn to live with yourself.

I have suffered from depression for a very long time and when I started out as a professional fine artist some 13 years ago, I had no idea what it would feel like to part with a work or to take criticism or even how to cope with the dismissive glances that people would give my work. Cries of "my 3 year old could do that" and the like really hammered into me and I got in a pretty bad way after my first solo exhibition. However there is always an end to any blight of depression. As Winston Churchill said of his depression "It is a black dog which sits in the corner and looks at me".

Being an artist and dealing with negativity when artists are a pretty (very) emotional bunch is difficult at first. I'm not saying nor ever saying that you should stop feeling and sometimes the critique that you get from an uneducated blow in can cut to the quick of a matter or work better than any carefully regarded gallerist opinion.What I am saying is that if you are to feel every comment as a body blow then you will go down hill very quickly and be in a bad way like I was. We all know how artists can get.

What you need to do is basically buck up and get used to it. I can sell a work now and not get that lost limb ache. I can hear a negative comment and discard it after sifting it for useful information. I don't let it get to me because I am used to it. I got used to it and so can you.
The final important thing to remember is that you can always find someone to talk to. Get a different perspective on things and remeber that there is an equal amount of light and dark in life. Peace.