In my drawing class we watched a Ted talk by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He talked about “Seeking Attention vs. Paying Attention”, and how social media have created an addictive craving for doing art to get attention. He said this diminishes creativity, but instead, our creativity is enhanced when we are fully absorbed in and paying attention to what we’re doing, be it painting, acting, or any other creative activity. We enter an altered state, and in this state we can feel like we are connected and  collaborating with others instead of competing and comparing ourselves against others.

I totally agree with Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Comparison and using creativity as a means to get attention kills it. In the past, I have struggled with self-doubt and with constantly questioning my value as an artist. I used to say to myself: “I know I love to make the art I make, but who will be out there and think  that it is good enough and will even want to have it? I had two standards, one for myself: “My art is honest and meaningful, and it has energy. I feel good about it” And one for the world that will see my art and (in my imagination) think: “This is not real art, not good enough, not skillful enough, not worth my attention.”

While I don’t think I’m making my art to get attention, I believe I love to make art to see myself and understand my experience of living in this world. Still, I am also wondering how I could let people know about it because I feel the desire to share it with others. However, what has complicated this endeavor in the past was that I didn’t believe that people “out there” would care about it.

Making art is a meditation for me. Just as Joseph Gordon Levitt points out, I am dedicated to being present and listening, fully diving into the creative current. It’s easy for me! Once I started to include my neurotic mind fuck conundrum as part of my creative projects and started inquiring and writing my art blogs about it, my neurotic addiction to negative self-talk eased. I realized that it had been based on comparison! I compared myself to other artists who were more successful in selling and showing their art in museums and galleries, and I told myself, “who would want my art in these venues? They will dismiss it quickly and  simply see it as not good enough!”

Just recently I got an email from a high school classmate announcing yet another exhibition of hers in my home town, Bern, Switzerland. Immediately, I felt the sting: “Ah, she is making it, and I’m not!” The deflation didn’t last long, though.  I know too well by now that many factors go into who is more successful at showing their art than others, and that it’s not only about how “good” the art is. And I am more and more making peace with who I am as an artist, one who is passionate about making art by feeling present and connected internally as well as with the world, and who sometimes manages to make a great piece of art among many others that are fun, playful, and pleasing to some. I’m an artist who is not very social or well-networked, who gets overwhelmed around too many people, and yet, one who is on a creative journey, through her art and her blogs, to find her unique way to reach those people who will respond to her art and treasure it. Mostly, she trusts that this will, for now, happen through personal connection, not through big marketing schemes, social networking, or even things like Instagram and other social media.

I clearly don’t make art to get attention. But I  do derive tremendous joy from sharing my art and seeing others loving it and enjoying it on their walls. I will keep letting this feeling of joy in my heart when seeing others being nurtured by my creations be a compass that guides me in finding my own unique and creative ways of sharing it.