Profiting off of Art

I was recently watching an episode on the Minimalists YouTube channel (Episode 154 if you are interested) where they shared the notion of never looking at creativity as a stream of income and not seeking to make a living off of a passion.  Initially, this idea struck me as kind of odd.  It seemed counterproductive to not try to do something we love for a living, or even to attempt to make some additional money off of something we are doing to express ourselves.  My thoughts went to writers, musicians, painters, sculptors and all of the people who are able to make their living off of their art.  They take their creativity and turn it into a way for them to make a living.   However, they took it a step further and said that our creativity should be utilized to make the world a better place, and that money may follow that once we use our creativity to help enough people solve their problems.  They discussed how important it is to add value to people’s lives and to the world at large but said that cannot be the main motivator because then there is a detrimental impact to our creativity as we attempt to alter our art for the sake of the audience. 

As I reflected on this, I recognized the truth within these statements.  Oftentimes, we start off being creative solely for the sake of being creative.  We don’t think that our silly songs or our finger paintings from preschool are going to make us money or win us friends and power.  Instead, we do these things for the satisfaction they bring us, for that funny little tickle in our mind and soul that we feel when we are creative solely for the sake of being creative and expressing ourselves.  Along the way, we lose that.  Brené Brown in one of her books (my apologies, I can’t seem to locate in any of my reading notes specifically which one…so I would suggest reading them all, because they are great) talks about the importance of us harnessing our ability to be creative.  It is critical for us to create, to pursue art, but just for ourselves.  It does something for our brains and is actually something everyone should pursue.  With my clients, I suggest that they find some source of creativity and pursue it relentlessly just for their own sake.  Ultimately, we have to create to be the best version of ourselves. 

However, as I often work with people-pleasers, the idea of doing LITERALLY ANYTHING solely for self is a lost and foreign concept.  You see, people-pleasers seek to amend their speech, their wants, their needs, their desires, and anything else they can effectively change, into something that makes it more desirable or presentable to others. This means that any creative outlet becomes an exercise in creating for the audience, rather than self, even if there is no known audience.  They end up frozen and not knowing what to create or so filled with self-doubt that nothing seems to want to come out of them.  Being in this anxious state of not understanding how to create without the knowledge of WHO to create for is deeply lost on them and they worry it will “be bad” or “someone might see it and laugh at me” or any sort of similar excuse.  Coaxing creativity out of them becomes an exercise in and of itself in those moments of such self-censoring behavior.  Once these individuals are allowed to begin expressing themselves purely to express themselves though, they can begin to feel like their voice and their experiences matter.

Looking at true artists who succeed we see the evolution of art.  A musician may spend ten years writing music, touring and sharing, selling demos to people and trying to drum up support before they get a deal and suddenly have their music all over the place.  By the time they put out a second album, they are sharing their newer music and who they are now as opposed to the most marketable songs of their previous ten years, and this often leads to a sophomore slump or the perception that these musicians are one hit wonders when in fact they have matured and grown and are creating new music that they love.  These musicians can either attempt to play THEIR music and be artistically fulfilled or they can compromise and try to write to their audience.  Those who seem to have longevity in the music world or truly in any artistic endeavor are those who create what THEY want and the audience discovers them, follows them, and buys into the artist and what they want to share.  Many artists show growth and change over the course of their careers because they are creating for themselves and the market is finding them and following them.

In any pursuit we have, we must be authentic to ourselves. This means when we are writing an email at work, we should write with US in mind as the audience. When we are doing a presentation, we have to present in a way that makes sense to us. Rather than attempting to picture a crowd in a room all in their underwear when we speak, we should picture the crowd as ourselves and present in a way that makes sense to us. Knowing your audience is the advice we often get when attempting to sell of convince someone to change their opinion or position, but that results in us being inauthentic. Always writing, presenting or speaking with another audience in mind robs us of authenticity and results in us having a faint odor of bullshit on us wherever we go.If we express ourselves in an effective way and ensure we communicate our creativity in an accessible way that is clear, then people will buy into it. We cannot create with the goal of making money, but instead we must create with the goal of purely expressing ourselves.