Many people think that being an artist means that you are creative 24/7; that amazing ideas blossom every morning and always turn into brilliant works of art. That artist’s live in a constant state of inspiration that effortlessly spills out into masterpieces…While we’re in this lala land, let’s just add some magical kittens and fairy dust to the art studio.

Allow me to crush this mental image into oblivion. Creating is a discipline, one of the most important things an artist needs to be successful is discipline. Inspiration is not inherent, it is worked toward, sought after and teased out of the mundane. This is a vital lesson. And it is the last thing taught in art school.

My freshmen year of University I remember going to the orientation lecture for the Art Department. I learned two very important things from this lecture. One: you can eat roughly 3 tubes of paint over the course of your lifetime and suffer no ill effects. Not all at once mind you, but if you have the propensity (as I do) on occasion to accidentally place your brush in your coffee or the wrong end of it into your mouth, you will not die. It has been a reassuring thought to me over the years.

The second is this: three years after graduating art school approximately 93% of people will be working in a different field. 93%. That’s ridiculous. What other vocation has that kind of job success and is still a vocation?

Now, I am sure there are many, many reasons for this statistic (and to be honest, I’m not sure what the numbers are today – it’s been a long time since my freshman year) but I am convinced that a major contributing factor to this number is the failure to properly prepare artists for actual studio practice. A failure to teach the idea that being an artist is very different than being an art student. Think about it. Think about the typical track that leads a person into a career as an artist. You’re a kid, you like to draw and doodle. Someone, a favorite teacher perhaps, tells you your good and a little spark flickers. You find yourself drawing all the time, copying cartoon characters, sketching your family and friends. You start taking art classes when you can finally choose electives. You love it, you learn how to use clay and paint, how to sculpt and draw – you pour yourself into your assignments, going above and beyond the average student’s engagement. It’s time for college and you’re going to do it- study art. Four years at art school – professors that challenge you with sometimes mundane and sometimes spectacular projects. Hours of life drawing (that’s code for nudes), late nights in the warehouse studios smelling of turps and coffee, portfolios brimming with fiddly, detailed design assignments. The work increases is difficulty, challenging your proficiency and conceptual integrity. But you rise to the occasion. Your senior year you must do a thesis project, you have a space, you have an advisor, you have a deadline – you must produce work which will be your farewell to academia. You go out into the world in a blaze of artistic glory.

And then…

Well, if you are an over-achiever you have lined up a studio space – it might be a back closet in your flat (mine was our dining room area in our first apartment). You have your space, your supplies (trust me you are well stocked after the college experience). You sit down to start.

And then…

This is the test. This is the spot that matters. There is no assignment. There are no professors. There are no group critques. For the first time in your life, there is no assignment giving you parameters, providing feedback, forcing you to formulate a concept into a work of art. It is freeing and it is paralyzing. Art school is very good at teaching technique, it’s extremely good at teaching critical thinking. But it is not good at teaching the self administered discipline that is needed to keep an artist creating. To be free from school is also to be free from forced discipline. You must be the assigner, the producer, and the cheerleader of your own work. You must motivate yourself, challenge yourself, egg yourself on to produce new work that, at present, doesn’t have a viewer or venue.

Add to this picture the fact that you also now have bills to pay, groceries to buy, life to live. You get a job (yes, it’s waiting tables – we’ve all been there) that allows you the freedom to still create. You work nights and paint during the day. It’s tough, but it’s worth it. You are doing it all.

Until you simply can’t anymore. You skip a day in the studio, because you’re just too tired. You have received your 12^th rejection from a gallery or juried exhibition. Your work is promising the letter says There is just so much talent out there that we are unable to exhibit your work at this time. You try to put this last rejection aside and get back to work. You stare for hours at a painting, unable to see the direction you need to go, unable to find the endpoint. You have no professor, no group critique, no one that is prodding you on. You leave it for now, you’ll come back to it. Maybe. Time passes, well-meaning friends want you come hang out – you don’t have to paint today (“it’s not like your job and your boss won’t give you the day off”). More and more often your art is relegated, if not in words then in attitude, to hobby – to a fun thing you are good at – like bowling, or gardening, or baking.

This is a bleak picture, I know; clearly I have opinions on this subject. I did not start out to write this particular post – I was thinking about inspiration (or the lack thereof) and I landed here, at discipline. This very fact should be a red flag for all of us. Inspiration takes discipline, it take commitment to yourself, your talent, your failures. It take the guts to acknowledge that some days you just don’t want to create and that those are the most important days to be in the studio. You feel you have nothing left but you must give more. This is the reality that is rarely mentioned in art school and my best guess at what causes so many to choose different paths in life. Maintaining inspiration is exhausting and relentless.

So now that I have all of us thoroughly depressed – where do I go? How do I lead us out of here.

I have no idea.

But I do know this. If this is you, if you have gone through any of this, felt any of this, experienced any of this – then get up and go make something. Open an old ratty sketchbook and draw something. Or better yet – buy a brand new one and a new pencil (there is no better inspiration than new art supplies). Paint, sculpt, read, write. Do. Even when you feel empty, no – especially when you feel empty – create. Creating is not a process of subtraction, it does not absorb itself or dry up– it feeds itself. There is strength in the discipline of doing something on a regular basis. Start small. Start for yourself. You are not creating a masterpiece, you are simply creating. Don’t know what to draw? I’ll help you out. Draw the corner of the room you are sitting in. Start there because, frankly, literally, that’s where you are.

And those rejections? Keep a folder; start a collection (it’s important to have a hobby). The average artist can expect 1 in 100 inquiries to lead to an opportunity. So enjoy the fact that you’re on your way. And if it’s the fiftieth one that pans out? Well then, congrats, you’re above average. And while you are creating folders, start another one too; I have one labeled ‘Things to make me happy when I’m not.’ There are lots of things in there, letters and emails from collectors, a poem someone once wrote using the titles of my pieces from a show, a picture of my studio at Uni, newspaper clippings, a photo of my son drawing next to me. It is my way of maintaining perspective on all those rejections. And it actually works.

We don’t always wake up inspired. In fact this past year, it’s been pretty rough to even catch a glimpse of it. I know I have found it difficult. I have turned to my ‘Things to make me happy when I’m not’ folder several times. And I have had many, many days of creating excuses to not work, which in turn made it harder to work. And the days where I slogged through the drudgery were awful. Sometimes they led to a glimmer of inspiration and sometimes they didn’t. But that’s just not the point – the point is I slogged through. I didn’t stop. If we stop in the middle of the drudgery, we don’t get out. I needed to remember this today. So perhaps I wrote this whole entry just for me; because I needed to hear that sometimes it’s tough, sometimes it’s slogging, and sometimes we need a little kick in the pants. Inspiration is not waiting every morning, but it’s worth working toward everyday.