I’ve been hiding away from my writing here for some time because I think I have started to lose the answer to this question right now. This is not specific to my blog, but more for my creative self as a whole. I think I am questioning the purpose of why I make, especially as I start to plan and prepare for more. Along with that, I’m also thinking about the audience: will anyone like my work? Will it sell?
I’ve really only had to think of that since doing the fair. It feels like the times before this when I was just drawing for fun, and putting it on instagram as my personal small gallery, those times were really just a distant dream. I guess there’s always a space and time to do things like this. It’s easier managing a brand, or something where is clearly made to sell. But when it’s me, then who am I selling it to? Am I even selling?
That’s really where my mind is at right now. I have ideas of expansion on the coffee bag zines. I could plan them for a seasonal release. But at the same time, there’s really gonna be a whole bunch of stuff that I would end up making, and I don’t really want to hold on to so many things. It would create so much stock at home.
I also really just wanna make things for fun, not to sell them, or to have some sort of art career. Maybe that’s the art career I want, the one that allows me to do all the disciplines that I find interesting and attractive, and that’s the one that I think I should work towards.
Maybe at the end of the day, I’m the real audience. Some what, slightly, completely self serving. But if I don’t make the work that I think is interesting, or that represents me at some core level, then how would I approach the later times when I’ll really need to apply myself as an artist to the world around me.
But the honest question that I asked myself before still remains: how do I show and bring hope through the art that I do. Is it even possible to?
I think I’ll try my best to approach it with hope, even though hope really seems so far away sometimes.