Damn I wasn’t watching this thread. I gotta catch up with some of your posts @Malkuth
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Spent some time arranging this last night and tonight.
This definitely indicates something about increasing bandwidth.
Things are afoot.
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Great Malkuth. What production tools do you use? What is inspiring you?
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Thanks @dorfmeister. Was hoping you’d share more of yours (although you could be selling them, so …).
I’m composing on NanoStudio 2 on my iPad. It’s weird. I have an electric piano that could be connected by MIDI as a keyboard controller, but I’m still just using the keyboard on the screen. Haha. And ever since NanoStudio 1 got upgraded, I don’t know how to do most of the things. Still can’t lay and sync vocals. It’s kind of hilarious. But I love it anyway.
As for what inspires me, I guess it’s the usual: the music, images, and feelings inside of me. Trying to touch that world.
Loved the drum work on this and the rhythm in general. That bassline really grooves with the drums.
This immediately made me think of the video game Persona for some reason. Just really chill adventurous kind of vibe to it.
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What is the story of this amazing art?
Well, perhaps you may want to preserve your privacy.
I’m just expressing that it is great. Is this your full-time work? (again, ignore the question, if you wish. I don’t need to know. I’m just curious.)
Thanks, Malkuth.
The art is very process oriented and can develop over weeks or even months of building up, sanding, adjusting, etc.
I am pretty serious about it and do sometimes sell it, though that has generally not been a priority.
I have had work in quite a few galleries, museums and exhibitions over the years and do have a degree in visual art.
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That feels right.
There is an unmistakable power and coherence to it.
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Can I ask why selling hasn’t been a priority? I understand not wanting to sell for the sake of selling, but any opportunity to attract abundance into your life and get paid to create what you love seems like a pretty sweet gig.
Maybe just making sure that that Soul-to-Stomach ratio and Self-to-Marketplace ratio stay in the right bounds?
I can imagine the process starting to feel uncomfortably crowded if too many extraneous concerns start elbowing their ways in.
But that’s from my perspective, maybe different for him.
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Ive never sold anything but I understand this feeling. But I also believe it’s a self imposed one a lot of artists create for themselves. A sort of limiting mindset. To me it’s all about maintaining integrity and authenticity and people being attracted to that. That would be the end goal for me. Not creating a product to sell to someone, but having people want what I have. Being such a demand I don’t “sell” anything.
That’s the thing though artistic endeavors have a minefield of limiting beliefs. You’ve got your own biases and then the echos of every single person in your life discounting the possibility of it being a viable money making opportunity
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Just to be clear, we’re talking about ourselves here, not @dorfmeister. He already said he does sell but it’s just not the top priority.
So I’m talking about me.
I think for me the issue goes beyond mere monetization.
There are definitely self-imposed aspects to how we imagine and relate to selling and the marketplace, but there are other aspects that are not.
The fundamental unit of the marketplace is literally Transaction. And transaction is the negotiation of value.
It’s not dirty. It’s not illegitimate. But it is a process ands set of skills in its own right. It requires attention and some degree of personal investment (of time, attention, energy).
For some people, Transaction, itself, is their art.
So evaluating how much care, effort, and mental/emotional real-estate one wishes to devote to it, is real and requires some intentionality.
It also requires developing sufficiently firm boundaries and some level of compartmentalization. The ‘cooks in the kitchen’ effect.
(EDIT: in other words, Thinking overly much about how and to whom this creation will be sold should be limited from excessively influencing the process itself. A balance needs to be struck. And where that right balance is for each of us can be a personal matter.)
I would not be surprised if Ultimate Artist helps with these kinds of things.
Now, with our Internet-mediated marketplace, some aspects of these things should be much easier than they once were. But probably still requires attention and management.
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Part of it is simply time. While it might be nice to make more money, it is not essential to keep me going, and I would not want the business part of art to cut into my creative time, which is already more limited than I would like.
It would be extremely difficult to make the work my source of a living. Most visual artists find little to no market for the work they make.
One of my teachers was successful enough to have his work featured in the Whitney Biennale, and have individual shows and purchases from significant museums.
Within five years of the height of his success it had all dried up and he was left overextended with no longer any prospect of an adequate income from his work, even though his wife worked full time managing the practical side of his career.
He had to shift gears, and while he continued making, he never got close to again be able to support himself and his family from his work.
The art market has great vicissitudes and few master it as a means of a living. I am not saying it can’t be done, but it is very difficult.
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Truthfully I’ve been a lot more influenced by my custom lately / possible astrological shifts. I completely understand what both of you are saying.
@Malkuth That balance you talk about has been ever present in my creative endeavors and I don’t even sell my stuff. So I know how unconsciously intertwined and messy it can get even with the best intentions. It’s definitely a skill.
@dorfmeister You definitely have more experience in this world than me when it comes to this. I can see how first hand experience like that can set the tone for what creating a living on art entails.
I just don’t like the idea of creative people losing time to their craft. It’s always bugged me and felt wrong. And lately I’ve been looking at the limiting beliefs surrounding all that.
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Yes, I reread your post and saw that I had overlooked some of the subtleties. In fact, you had already addressed several of the points that I raised.
I also noticed something that seemed potentially eyebrow-raising, probably in a good way. I’ll see if I can pull it together and then post it here.
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I was rereading and reflecting on what you’d written above when suddenly it hit me. Wait a second!
The following is from almost exactly one year ago.
It’s not like you flipped 180 or something. The basic integral values are consistent. But your subsequent increase in comfort, ease, and focused motivation with regard to proactive direction of your own path and livelihood seem unmistakeable.
Interesting. And cool, I think.
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Thanks for pointing this out, this is cool. It’s like a refinement in my thinking. I think a lot of that from a year ago carries anger at the world and the demonizing of things that actually don’t have an inherent quality to them. I think I mentioned it before but my goal of AM was more grounding in the material world, seems like I’m getting closer. A transition from struggle to abundance mentality.
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