Edison, how did you not get discouraged after failing more than 1,000 times?” to which Edison replied, “I have not failed even once, I have only discovered 1,000 ways that do not light a light bulb.”
hope is the mother of fools
I always considered myself to be quite an optimistic person. One time when I was in the day hospital we(the patients) were told a story about a shop of dreams. I no longer remember that story/ fairy tale well enough to repeat it. But I remember that this story had a moral- if your dream has not been fulfilled yet it is because the price for that dream has not been paid yet. I believed this. I also heard sayings like if you want to make money, you need to spend money. I believed that as well. And most of all I wanted to believe that all failures are necessary part of the path towards success and triumph. And when I say triumph I don't mean millions in my bank account or world wide fame. For me triumph would be something many people would consider a bare minimum- I dreamed about earning a stable minimum wage from my art. But apparently even such a basic dream as being able to make ends meat just from my art is too big?
I started making visual art in 2017. I have no idea how much I spent for my art supplies and tools over that nearly a decade. But it was far more than I earned. That is not surprising because during that time I sold 5 pieces and earned only...370 eur. On the other hand I have gifted many of my pieces. At the moment my saved list of gifted pieces says that I have gifted 36 pieces? If I would be the only who has hard time selling his art you could just say that I suck at making art. But on facebook I see that few of my facebook friends who in my opinion make nice art are also struggling to sell their pieces. They are posting pieces that were created years ago and asking (in my opinion) way too low prices. But despite that people are still not buying it. This makes me feel that the world(or at least Lithuania) no longer wants or needs art. Not only my art but any art.
During those years I tried many things. From basics like posting in various social medias and several groups of facebook. Or having a pact with a devil a galery. To gifting some of my best pieces. To making profesional prints of my art and trying to sell them to my neighbours... I failed time and time again. But I was still hopeful that I will reach that minimum wage dream eventually. At this point I feel tired and depressed from trying to sell my art. My engine run on naive hope for years and years. But now finally it is about to stop working. I am starting to think that I may not live long enough to reach that minimum wage dream.
It is a shame that these topics were given to us now and not a few weeks later. Because my current piece(first photo of this post) would have worked better with those topics once it would be completed. Because among other things this piece is about my love for creating art, the unrivaled joy I feel from creating something unique...But also about a litteral suffering and constant dissapointment that comes with trying to sell art. In the end I don't think that I have any hope left. So I guess I will have to struggle on without hope. I still love making art. Even if my ,,earnings'' are very very negative. But I don't think that I can keep this up like this. So things will have to change in the future. I will be taking a break. Not from creating but from trying to sell. No idea how long this break will be. A month? A year? I still have space on my own walls/ tables so I will make some pieces just for myself. Pieces of which originals will remain here forever....unless someone will offer me a king's ransom.😛 Perhaps I will eventually offer prints of those pieces for sale. But even if I will do that those prints will not be cheap. Sorry for longer post rant. But I needed to scream and shout into the void for a bit.
This was my answer to third topic- ''Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm: What do you think of this quote and how could it apply to you? Explain."