Struggle Is a Sure Sign You're Creating Art

Jul 24, 2017
3 min read

All great works of art are trophies of victorious struggle. —Julius Meier-Graefe

We all have our struggles - the obstacles and hardships. If we're not cautious, they can hold us back as artists from moving forward and doing what really matters.

I have a realization about struggle and art: Creation always comes from chaos.

Often, artists want to wait for perfection before pursuing our craft. We all want to clean the desk before going to work. To empty our inbox before we begin writing - but often, this is just stalling. If we are constantly waiting for "perfect" we are kidding ourselves.

Life is messy. And if we're going to create meaningful work, we're going to have to enter the mess. Babies are born with pain, sweat, and blood, and so are our greatest projects. There is absolutely no way around it.

Imagine yourself sitting at a coffee shop for hours. The only thing on your mind is that you want to make something. ANYTHING. It could be controversial photographs, or the next damn Mona Lisa. It doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's SOMETHING. You just want to create.

Do as the painters in the Louvre did. Do as the sculptures of old Greece have done. Write just as the story tellers on your bookshelf have done! But then again, you may be shooting a bit too high if you want be just as good as Leonardo. And then again, maybe you’re not. Hard work can turn into success of any degree. If you put enough effort into your passion, then you too may be the next Stephen King or Banksy! Now, all you have to do is juggle that schooling or job you have. Maybe a little bit of loneliness too.

The urge to make something will come out of nowhere. It may appear when you first wake up or when you sit down for lunch. It also may appear during class when you’re supposed to be paying attention, but that dang pencil of yours just won’t stay out of the margins. It’ll sway there, back and forth, scratching the surface of your paper until you have a doodle of a dog, or frog or a butt farting. It’s the little drawings that get you through the class. But it’s not what you want. You want to get back to that sketchpad of yours and do something bigger! Too bad you have a seven-page essay due in a few days. The topic hasn’t been figured out, little alone the research. So… you regretfully say to yourself “I’m going to have to draw later….” And so begins the list of tragedies for artists.

Now for the big kicker. My personal worst enemy.

Loneliness.

Not to say I don’t enjoy being alone sometimes. I like to sit in solidarity. Read my book in a separate room. Write by myself. But then there are those times where I feel as if I haven’t experienced a person in a God knows how long. It’s heart breaking sometimes. The depressing thoughts of being alone hit me like a truck. It’s horrible. This is probably the hardest part about being an artist of any form. For the most part you will be working alone. You will be by yourself, sculpting clay with no one to talk too but your own mind. That’s not to say you won’t have like-minded fellows. Birds of a feather flock together. The artist will find his/her kind and the loneliness drifts away. Plus, when you’re hard at it, the idea that no one is around you disappears. Its only after everything is done that you see the room is empty.