Recently, I’ve been thinking about my career as a painter, and I don’t know how to feel. To be honest I do know, I just don’t want to be harsh about it, because it’s not myself that is the reason I don’t like the idea of being a painter anymore. It’s actually people I know, my ‘peers’ or younger Gen Z generation (Not all, but some).You see, I actually care about painting, i respect it, I respect all craftsman/craftswomen actually, but I don’t respect the use of an image of something to gain some sense of coolness. I think a lot of young people use being a painter as being cool, I sound old even though I’m only 30 but maybe thats where the disconnect is. These 20- something year olds to me seem like babies to me, not that they are but I guess theres a bigger difference between 25-30 than 20-25, some of their work looks young too, i don’t think mine did when I was 25, but maybe it did, maybe it still does… that’s when I painted ‘Every Child’s first sin’. I used to love streetwear and during lockdown I felt like I was the only one combining that on social media, so I always knew to keep the work high quality and have the fits on point, but it was my thing, not that I was the only one in the world doing it, but who was in 2019? thats 6 years giving out a blueprint that in this day’n age of social media was a good pattern for attention… but it’s not unique anymore and everyone does it now. and the work isn’t really up to par when i see it. but that was a format i often enjoyed, and i hate when things you enjoy become mass because then it’s associated with a certain type of person that you maybe never were but if you keep doing it, slowly but surely you become the meme that you never meant to start… Bring back 2019, when the game wasn’t so over saturrated and every artist didn’t think they were a living Basquiat but more themselves… I also think Artists on social media need to remember that likes do not mean you’re a good artist, you have cultivated an audience yes, but that audience might have terrible taste, to truly know what you’ve done is of high standard, you must stand the ‘test’, the one that everybody must take, and that ‘test’ of course, is the one ‘of time’.
I also don’t make good friends out of painters, I try but everyone is always so competative. A concept I never understood because I’m doing this for love of it, not to be better than anyone. I often think about me at 4 when i first started and some of the things I’ve accomplished with my craft is something I never thought I’d see or do. I’m truly proud of myself, thats why i choose to stay away/isolate myself from the other painters I can sense are monitoring spirits or just flat out haters. I refuse to let anyone take away the joy of being a painter just because of their own insecurities. i feel like a hypocrite saying that considering the etirety of this first paragraph on this entry. But fundly enough I think the types of people i mentioned in the first paragraph and who i am taling about now are often times the same people. I know a guy who’s not been painting for long, I think his work is pretty shit, but i’m sure he thinks he’s the dogs bollocks, he does all that extra verbal talk (where people use big words for no reason, I find a lot of painters/artists do that when they’re trying to compensate for not being good at what they do) and his friends around him gas up his work but they aren’t painters they definitely don’t know what good art is (btw, never trust anyone who claps for dog shit covered in glitter, they’ll convince you sewer water is the elixir of life). The only reason i can be honest about calling his work shit is because he monitors my work on socials or in real life and has tried to tell me in different ways that my work is not that good. I laugh because I know thats not true, you may not be into it, but its not shit. His is shit. nothing more to add there, thats it. Wish him the best though (because that’s what God would want, but i’m a work in progress who actually doesn’t care for his work, I personally think the art world be better off without him, and thats not because of his work, thats down to his shit attitude of thinking no one is better than apart from an old master, that probably is typical of the renaissance/romantacism period, when really in comparison to him, everyons an old master, including a 5 year old).
I never thought about it, but being a painter is lonely work, especially when you’re good. I think the more intense the artist the lonelier they are.