I've been thinking for a long time about whether or not to write this blog entry. But well, in the end I did it, one of the reasons was that I think I owe you the truth. And I hope you won't despise me for it after you've read this.
I also don't want to point fingers on how mean the world is. What I'm listing here are my own, plain experiences with this business. I would like to show that not everything is always nice and easy like they want you to believe.
One thing before we start: my little empire with the name ArT RefugiuM will continue to exist. On the surface, not much will change. But beneath, a few fundamental things will change.
So let's begin with the rational look behind the scenes of an aspiring artist …
I'm frustrated. Tired from a fight against windmills. Drained and not willing anymore to take any more steps further. Maybe you can call it an artistic existential crisis. Or total, plain failure, because you're not made for a world like ours.
The arts have always been a part of my life, ever since I can think.
Already as a little kid I had a strong affinity to office supplies of any kind, and I could become very insufferable if my mother would drag me out of the office supply department at the supermarket. School notebooks and pencils of all sorts were a solid part of my childhood.
At school our teacher wasn't very pleased with me drawing manga stuff during maths, but I didn't give up. Eventually though manga started to bore me and so I stopped drawing these things.
Then Bob Ross came on TV and I wanted to paint too.
Ever since I can remember I had admired people who could draw or paint. Until one day I made the discovery that I could do that too. I still don't dare to call myself „good“ up until today, but at least I think I made it to make my stuff look somewhat „ok“.
Over 6 years ago, in early 2012, I then began to drastically work on my skills. First with pencil portraits, then with acrylic paints, and over the years colored pencils, leaf metal etc would follow. The motivation was big back then, after my Nightwish portrait series had gotten quite good resonance I thought hey – maybe this is what you're here for. Maybe you've found your vocation. Making art became a passion of mine and in the end my way of life. The perennial urge to create physical versions of the images my head gives me. The habit to see details, where others only would take a superficial look. To study my surroundings more closely and draw inspiration from that.
So around 2014 I think it must have been that I got my first commission through a friend of the family. And that's where it started. At least I thought so.
I also started in 2013 to start selling my stuff on Etsy. I started to tirelessly inflate my empire, to advertise myself, shouting „Hey, I'm here and I'll work for money!“ out into the world. I even had gotten myself, thanks to my best friend, my own little home page (that I crashed at least two times out of not knowing what I did, but that is written in another book).
But most of my days and nights passed by like a summer afternoon in the garden: you hear the crickets chirping, but that's all there is. I had to make a living off something else than art.
If I'm lucky nowadays I sell 2 or 3 things a year on Etsy and maybe get about 2 commissions from a good friend … but that's about it.
I've been present on countless platforms online over the years, followed every advice on how to promote yourself, always looking for new opportunities, did EVERYTHING to be somehow noticed. Well.
Others may have succeeded with these things. But I myself continued to hear the grass grow.
My dream to be able to make a living off something I loved to do, something for which I wouldn't hate myself every day and ask myself why I'm doing it at all … burst like a soap bubble that got too big. If I would have wanted to make a living off the few things I sell a year, I would have had to set the prices so high that nobody ever would take interest in my things anymore whatsoever. But I didn't want that. I'm someone who knows what it's like to have nothing at all, and hence I didn't want to charge too much.
But in the end it seems it still was too much.
I didn't want to realize this for a long time and kept on running in my hamster wheel. Busily kept on shouting into the woods, trying to make my inconspicuous existence visible for the world.
With every work that I posted, the reactions got less. Well ok, we're not talking about deviant art anymore here since that page is about to die. But let's take Facebook for an example. I was lucky when I got about 5 or 7 likes over the months. There was only one drawing that was an exception to this and that was my first colored pencil portrait. It made my statistics go through the roof.
But for anything else: dead silence. 13k views and nobody wanted that drawing.
In the beginning of this year I've had it then.
Enough of always trying to get attention.
Enough of being present everywhere to MAYBE find someone who would MAYBE be interested in commissioning me, just to run away in the end when I'd show them my price list. Or they'd ask – Could you do this in a different medium (mostly one I had never touched in my life)? Or writing to me after I had finished the work that they weren't satisfied and didn't want to pay.
Enough of all the circus about if I'm good enough, if I promote myself enough, if I waste enough time to reach nothing in the end.
I now draw a line under this messed up bill. Tabula Rasa.
I'm turning my back to the art business. I'm done with it.
I'll have to make a living in a different kind of occupation.
I will even shut down my Etsy if I should feel like doing so.
BUT: Please don't get me wrong now – I will NOT stop with art itself!
Because it is embedded so deeply into my very being – it has always been – that it would resemble suicide if I'd stop completely. No. I will continue creating. Because it needs to get out. Because it forces my head to be silent for a few hours. Because I'm nothing without my creativity. And maybe to leave a little something behind for the world after me. Maybe my descendants can at least make some money out of the stuff I created. When I'm gone and don't need it anymore.
My facebook page will continue to exist. I will continue posting for you so that you can continue to look at nice pictures. Nothing big will change. Except for that the advertisement will get more silent. My blog will also continue to exist.
My web page, deviant art, youtube, all that, it will all stay like it is. I will also continue doing videos. Just to document the process.
But I won't live anymore for the sake of selling stuff.
I will go back to being a hobby artist if you want so.
What I'll do with commissions I don't quite know yet. But for now I think I'll only do them for people I know. People that know who I am, who value my work and support me. But even them I will confront with the decision on what my art is worth to them in the end.
No more price tables, no endless terms and conditions that nobody reads anyway, just to wonder then why I'm having terms because I've been fooled so many times already.
Just me, my tools and the urge to create.
Thank you for listening :) I will keep you updated. I've got a few works in the making currently and one of them should be done somewhen soon. And what comes after that, we'll see.
Take care,
Marlies
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