I’ve been feeling out of sorts with the work. The work of course, always seeping into all parts of my life. What happens when the work is your life?
When I first started painting, finding my artistic voice was my number one priority. I don’t say that lightly. I mean I placed it above most things: relationships, sleep, time outside, rest.
Creative exploration fueled my every thought. I couldn’t get enough. It became my purpose, my obsession. I would work 18 hour days, staying up late in the studio with three hours of sleep, all to wake up for work the next day. I repeated this cycle for years. More and more, my authentic self started showing up in the work I explored here. A kind of flow so special you can’t really explain. A kind of justification and validation that I have never felt anywhere else in my entire life. I felt real.
Art exploration was fueled by my hunger for realness. “I exist!” In a way that is good and true and worthy.
Working as a full-time artist has been an adjustment. Navigating the art world, and where I ultimately want to end up—that itself… is a full-time job. I want to push myself to create more complex layers in my work, in all formats. Color, composition. Structure. I don’t want to settle into one box. I want to continuously outgrow the one I placed myself in the year before. I want my art to reflect the learning in my life, and more importantly– connect in the lives of others where they need it most. Art filled holes in my life that are “unfillable” by anything else. I keep going in the hopes that maybe, somehow, it can be that for someone else, too.
The more time I spend online, the more I find myself feeling the opposite of flow. I find it difficult to share the things that used to fuel my connections here. I feel overstimulated, understimulated, and bored…. All at the same time. I feel depressed at the state of our world and annoyed that we have access to so much at every moment of every day. I feel energetically exhausted taking it all in, and I don’t know where to put all of it, or how to help. When I do place something out into the world, I feel imposter syndrome for taking up space. Like I’m ashamed for finally reaching a life I feel proud to call mine. It’s a very strange place to be.
Somehow, the resentment I feel for the online world has become entangled with my physical work of painting. Because I’ve grown from the beginning here, on this platform with you all, it doesn’t feel natural to have one without the other. My creative practice, since starting a business, has always run alongside these online platforms. The ‘imaginary audience’ of my life, as some might say. We’ve been able to connect over the years in such an intimate way. The amount of gratitude I have for every person and every connection I’ve made because of these platforms has been nothing short of life-changing. I genuinely mean that.
I wouldn’t be here without it, and without you.
The ‘work’ that I have to publish on these apps to stay relevant today is what I would deem, “soul-sucking”. The new changes here leave me feeling icky, inauthentic, and exhausted. And then, in turn, writing about how exhausted they make me feel makes me feel like a whiny kid throwing a tantrum. We’re forced to become artists FOR the apps, rather than artists for ourselves. The apps have manipulated us from making real, honest art into making art that keeps people numb a little longer, thus making them more money. They need us all to be so dissatisfied with our life that we physically, emotionally and spiritually leave our own / in order to spend all of our time peering into our screen; daydreaming about someone else’s.
no one’s life is better than the one you are already living.
did you scoff at that? roll your eyes? hear your inner critic start to flare?
that’s the power of social media.
And of course, the capitalist pressure feeds the online machine well. We all long for work that allows a sense of purpose, of freedom, of safety. Everyone is exhausted; our basic needs in America (and most of the world) are not being met; but we have to continue on the daily wheel in order to stay afloat. We are longing for change, looking for a way to make our lives more enjoyable, sustainable and free. Instagram and TikTok have opened those doorways for many, many people. it became the new-age way of ‘sticking it’ to the corporate world and going your own way. It’s only natural that as a culture, we are now looking to these apps and thinking, ‘this may be my chance’. who doesn’t long for a better quality of life?
And so we wake up, we spend most of our day on our phone, doing exactly as these companies want: relying on them to change our lives.
Numbing is all part of that cycle too. It breeds insecurity and contempt. Everything we experience can be altered and displayed as online art: from the coffee you consume at the rainy window, to the shower you take at night. I find myself saddened by the overwhelming thoughts that crowd and creep and linger in my brain while I scroll. How could I possibly ever afford a studio that large and beautiful? If I get a bit of filler in my lips, will I be more attractive? I’m 31 years old and have nothing figured out. Will this new dress make me feel more like myself? Want, want, want.
It just strips me of my here and now; and with it, my flow. There are so many bits of information coming in that I can’t tell which parts are worth keeping.
Back to creativity..
We produce work and videos of our work that we believe will perform well for the algorithm. our unique voice that formulated the art in the first place— is irrelevant. I hear stories of musicians producing songs specifically tailored to performance on TikTok. We see people’s lives become completely changed forever by just one viral video; and it entices us to keep going. Even though it may not feel like us, take away time from our creative endeavors, prevent us from the privilege of boredom… we keep going. many of us make our living through these apps. we have to clock in, regardless of the day we’re having— like a normal job. the problem with social media, though— is they create the addiction to all of it so precisely that we are quite literally never clocking out.
Over the last decade, these online platforms have changed the world forever. But with it, we’ve created the need to sustain. These applications are designed to hold us here. To keep not only our attention; but our creativity, in a complete chokehold. It takes us out of our creative genius and leaves us screaming into the void, longing to stay relevant. The time that I used to spend expanding my creative practice, is now spent scrolling to find a ‘trending’ sound to use; because it’s the only way anyone will see my work, and in turn, pay my bills.
I don’t want someone to discover my work because a reel or a tiktok went viral with me standing next to it.. I want someone to connect with my work because they read something that resonated with them, because a composition stopped them in their tracks, because they feel less alone in the human experience. I want it to be personal. art has always been created to keep the INTERRELATEDNESS alive.
I want to know we’re still here, underneath it all– connecting.
Social media has stripped me of feeling that. The last three years have not been easy, but they have excavated an ENORMOUS amount of learning. The shedding of old layers and old versions of myself that were unhealthy, painful, and stunted. The me I’ve waited 30 years to meet. It takes so much courage, energy, and focus to remain true to the self I’ve found. With the drastic changes in these apps, I find myself showing up and doing things that have never aligned with this version of me or my work.
To watch it happen and to know it, is heartbreaking.
The Sam I’ve worked so hard to uncover, just to bury in order to avoid becoming ‘irrelevant’. In order to keep someone’s attention, just a second longer. To trade the value of my work for the hopes that it keeps me in the forefront, and continuing to connect in the way I once had. the hypocrisy of it all is infuriating.
Now that being online feels nothing like who I am, it’s taken my ability to create alongside it. Because they have become enmeshed, they have become one. And with that gone, I am not in a safe space with my work.
As someone with crippling depression and anxiety, I’ve fought my entire existence to earn a life that allows me to stay in that light; that keeps me feeling real. I have to step away from anything that ever impedes on that. After reflecting the last few months on why I have felt less and less in the light, it worries me that the answer to this question is the underlying foundation of how our society functions now: my reliance to being online.
To the core of my being, I want nothing less. I do not want to make 10 second videos of me turning my canvas around just to show up on an algorithm. I do not want to stop my entire creative flow to constantly record, move my tripod, and capture 100 different variations of the same thing. I do not want to post on these applications and show my highlight moments, just to make someone else feel irrelevant. I do not want to see other women on these apps and want to change my face or prevent it from aging. I do not want to spend time scrolling in an attempt to find some magical solution or strategy to make sure my audience sees my work.
I do not want my work to be a source of validation for me; instead a means to release and feel free. What I’m not sure of, is where to go from here. What that looks like for me as an online creator, an artist, a writer. I do know, more than I know most things, that I long for more presence, more intention, more life. I want to write more and paint more and be bored again. I want to see what grows from that space. I want to nurture that space and be comfortable in it again. Feel like I’m back in the light.
In my happiest memories as a child, I’m just a girl, scribbling with markers on the floor and splattering paint too hastily along the entirety of the table. I have no idea where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. But it’s the only place where I ever felt real.
In my life now, I have many responsibilities in keeping this online business afloat. There are so many things to be done, and painted and filmed and edited and written and pinned and shared.
But in my absolute best moments, in the moments where I love myself most; I am just a girl, making things with her hands.
