Five Artists share what didn’t work & why

Recent research has found that many have prob­lems with goals both set­ting and achiev­ing. A key part in this issue is the rel­a­tive inflex­i­bil­ity with which we view goals, they are seen as some­thing set in solid foot­ings for a future we have no con­trol over. Another key issue with goals is the implied judg­ment asso­ci­ated with achiev­ing or not achiev­ing goals…we tend to define our suc­cess in rela­tion to our goals. The prob­lem with this approach is it also has a very dam­ag­ing effect on our self esteem by over valu­ing suc­cess and  dis­count­ing lit­tle suc­cesses and more impor­tantly mak­ing us more and more risk averse which in the end lim­its our creativity.

Finally, goals by there very nature imply an end point, giv­ing us uncon­scious per­mis­sion to for­get the process and move on to con­quer the next moun­tain. The process is actu­ally most impor­tant and not learn­ing from the process reduces our abil­ity to choose one path or direc­tion over another.

There is a grow­ing move­ment in the human potential/growth move­ment to replace goals with inten­tion. While there may appear to be lit­tle dif­fer­ence between the two, look­ing a lit­tle deeper two con­cepts couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent. Where goals imply and end point inten­tion implies process, and by its’ nature takes change and adap­ta­tion into account. Focused inten­tion, stays with us and it gives the abil­ity to stay present. Inten­tion also removes judg­ment from the pic­ture leav­ing us able to change course as needed, instead of being seen as fail­ure. Finally, inten­tion gives us per­mis­sion to eval­u­ate actions and make changes based on those eval­u­a­tions because fail­ure is no longer an issue.

Today, our five artists look back and assess what didn’t work for them and why…they do so with­out self judgment.

What didn’t work for you in 2009 and why do you think it didn’t?

Jan Blencowe

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Actu­ally ded­i­cat­ing four full days a week to paint­ing fell flat as a goal. Or as my teenagers would say, it was an epic fail. Why? Lazy? No. I com­pleted 60 paint­ings in 2009 so clearly I’m putting in the stu­dio time. I think it has more to do with my tem­pera­ment and they way I approach the cre­ative process. I tend to be a “chun­ker” not a lin­ear worker. By that I mean I go in fits and stops, work­ing furi­ously and with focus for sev­eral days and then tak­ing a respite to refill my cre­ative well.  I’m not likely to decide that Mon­days, Tues­days, Fri­days and Sun­days are my paint­ing days and then stick to it. So the goal didn’t really match my way of work­ing and thus was not met in the way I ini­tially expected it would.  Next year the goal will be dif­fer­ent, per­haps num­ber of paint­ings com­pleted per month or even just per year would work better.

Kris­ten Stein

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I haven’t been suc­cess­ful in licens­ing my designs on a large scale, nor sign­ing with an artist rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Per­haps part of this is my own igno­rance and skep­ti­cism of the role of the artist rep­re­sen­ta­tive, since I have been a self-representing artist for so many years. I do hope that I can afford a lit­tle time to research, in 2010 and make more sig­nif­i­cant progress in sat­is­fy­ing these remain­ing goals. With a lit­tle more orga­ni­za­tion, I’d like to make a more com­plete artist ret­ro­spec­tive that allows view­ers to more read­ily see my port­fo­lio of images avail­able for licens­ing. I hope to add this artist ret­ro­spec­tive back to my web­site in 2010, but with a more fluid way for view­ers to see the port­fo­lio of images.

Michelle Ciarlo-Hayes

|web site |etsy |

What didn’t work? Enter­ing the year with­out any goals! How can you set about tack­ling the mon­u­men­tal task of sell­ing your art to the world with­out step­ping stones to achieve the end result?

Liese Mar­tin

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I guess I am just awful at spe­cial com­mis­sions. Art starts to feel like“homework”  for me when I am told too specif­i­cally what to do and I worry about if the cus­tomer will like it the whole time. I wind up pro­cras­ti­nat­ing the work and it just ruins the whole expe­ri­ence for me. No more cus­tom work for me.

Jane Camp­bell

| blog | Twit­ter |

Being more scheduled/disciplined def­i­nitely didn’t work out like I planned. I am eas­ily side­tracked and often scattered.Perhaps it won’t ever work out like I’d like it too. I did start liv­ing by a list. Mak­ing a list of daily tasks. See­ing them marked off each day gives me a bet­ter sense of accom­plish­ment. I hope to get bet­ter at this in 2010.