Fantasy Land

Sunday Snapshot

I struggle to describe myself as an artist, because I straddle so many mediums and genres. Because of that, I sometimes feel like there is no focus.

I need to continually remind myself that my focus is the process.

By process, I mean that it's not about the outcome - it's about showing up to the studio and listening to what wants to come out of me that day. It's not about forcing a project to completion - it's about trusting that some projects will come to completion in a joyful way if I just show up and keep making. Perhaps my description as an artist will be the aggregate of all my work when I die. It's not my job to determine what that is.

I have a quote from Will Smith that I think about a lot: (From subreddit /r/inspirationalquotes ):

"You don't try to build a wall, you don't set out to build a wall. You don't say 'I'm going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that's ever been built.' You don't start there....You say 'I'm going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid'. And you do that every single day and soon you have a wall."

For me to perfectly lay a brick, I need the studio to be a safe place. This is where I come to evade the chaos of the internet, the expectations of others, and the responsibilities of the rest of my life.

It needs to be a safe place because this is where I need to be able to continually say, "This is not possible," and do it anyways.

I need to be working on the impossible, because if I thought I was making something that was already predetermined and easy and known, it would be a waste of time, and uninteresting to me. There is no point to making art if you already know what it's going to be.

My studio is a Fantasy Land, where I build impossible, joyful little bricks. One by one, it happens - every morning.

 http://draworbedrawn.com/