What exactly is art? Have you ever asked your­self that ques­tion? Sure…probably every­day you walk into your stu­dio and I’ll bet you never thought of your­self as a super hero…well think again.

Let’s face it, art is more than brush­ing paint onto a can­vas, or throw­ing that per­fect pot… a lot more actu­ally. It is exactly that “lot more” thing that can put you on the road to being the super hero that helps save the world. Why? You ask. Well, there are many rea­sons but for brevity sake I’ll boil it down to:

• cre­at­ing art is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act it changes things, it changes the way we see the world and more impor­tantly effects the way those who see and get our work also see the world.
• cre­at­ing art is not about fol­low­ing direc­tions, it’s not about “doing the right thing” , it’s not about fit­ting in and it’s not about pre­cisely emu­lat­ing a style.

Instead, cre­at­ing art is about emo­tional invest­ment. The energy you expend each time you say “what if I try this? or I won­der what would hap­pen if I .…”. It is about draw­ing your own pic­ture, invent­ing your own style, the true artist has the courage to ask those ques­tions. She has no other choice really, she knows that things might not work out and she  knows she might also be sur­prised and it’s the sur­prises that keep her going and her accep­tance of each sur­prise that makes her unique.

The beauty of look­ing at cre­ativ­ity from this point of view is, that art is and can be any­thing that involves emo­tional labor. Fear is the bugga boo that dri­ves us to stay put, to not take the risk of try­ing that new spice  because… we are afraid of being laughed at, ridiculed, shunned or cast out. So we stay teth­ered to the tried and true because.…well it’s easier.

Think about the last time you stepped com­pletely into the unknown, the last time you wadded the instruc­tions up and tossed them out the win­dow. What were you hear­ing, what were the voices say­ing? Did you in fact toss the instruc­tions despite the sweat drip­ping from your brow? Or, did you keep them spread out before you and con­tinue paint­ing by num­bers because any­thing else was to hard or unsure.

Step 1, Step 2, Step 3.….

When you paint by num­bers you are fol­low­ing the instruc­tions of the part of your brain that told the cave­man not mess with Saber toothed tigers and the sol­dier to beware of that strange look­ing box by the side of the road in Kan­da­har. And that’s a good thing but we are not always fac­ing road­side bombs and cer­tainly not Saber toothed tigers. More on this lit­tle piece of our evo­lu­tion in later posts.

The prob­lem is,  paint­ing by num­bers can be done by a trained mon­key or a robot, pro­duc­ing ordi­nary makes you ordi­nar­ily replace­able. When you paint by num­bers you only use labor which makes  price the only dif­fer­ence between you and the next guy,  and guess who will get the sale when they man­age to under­price you.…?

On the hand…while the artist who invested emo­tional labor to make her gift truly unique may not get thou­sands of sin­gle sales, she will how­ever, get loy­alty, repeat buy­ers and a grow­ing net­work. The loy­alty and net­work of  patrons hap­pens because she paints her own paint­ings, builds her own pots, or designs her own jew­elry. She would rather die than paint by the numbers.

The thing is…

The thing is, peo­ple are tired of paint by num­bers, they want the pas­sion, the vision and the emo­tional energy of the true artist. When they come across a true artist they feel the pas­sion and the love, and they know they are receiv­ing the great­est gift possible…the heart­felt con­nec­tion between two people.

The other thing is…those folks who rush to buy the paint by num­bers work are afraid to buy work they can con­nect with, it makes them feel, it changes them, two things they have gone out of their way to not expe­ri­ence. Safety is their choice,  and when safety is the decid­ing fac­tor, the only thing that dis­tin­guishes one thing from another, price becomes the mod­ern equiv­a­lent to the Saber toothed tiger. So, the poor paint by num­bers guy becomes replace­able, since those buy­ers with the cheap cri­te­ria will, all to, will­ingly shift their sights to the cheap­est ver­sion of paint by numbers.

The final thing is, the artist will save the world because she cre­ates her own instruc­tions, she is flex­i­ble and she has the con­fi­dence to draw on the depth of her expe­ri­ences and she isn’t attached to an out­come, because she knows tomor­row is another day. More impor­tantly, the peo­ple who love her work, love it not only because of the depth of skill, they love it because every time they look at the paint­ing, use the pot or snap the bracelet on, they dis­cover some­thing new, a lit­tle sur­prise. Those sur­prises are the gift of the artist, the gift that reminds the user or the wearer of how nice that paint­ing, pot or bracelet makes them feel. They see the gift of car­ing, the gift of emo­tional labor and that changes the way they see their world.

That’s how artists will

save the world.

Are you an artist? Does your work change how oth­ers see their world? Or, do you pre­fer to paint by num­bers? Either way you have a choice and we all hope you will chose to be an artist.