As I prepare to offer my first body of work, I become cognizant of why it took me 6 months to put a price on my art and make it available for purchase. While there were some very real roadblocks along the way in the form of business compliances and tech failures, I let those roadblocks stop me from moving forward and took way more time than was required to resolve them.
I realized that I was caught up in a web of vulnerability translating to fear masking as perfectionism. In this blog post, I dissect the different elements constituting this web as I disentangle it to move forward.
The Vulnerability of Creating
Creating art is a vulnerable act. The process of creating art is a sacred process for many artists, it is a meditative act and a time to go inward.
For some artists, creative expression is an outlet to process and work through emotions that sometimes cannot be comprehended in any other way.
And for a lot of artists, art-making facilitates a sense of grounding and calm, while creating expansion and joy.
So all art stems from a place of vulnerability because its creation demands honesty from the artist.
The Fear of Sharing
It is not surprising that sharing the testament of one’s vulnerability for the world to see is accompanied by fear. The fear of being seen, the fear of being judged for your authenticity, the fear of not being understood, the fear of being rejected. The fear can manifest in many ways depending on which piece of you have you put on paper.
Butterfly Totems encapsulates my spiritual side, a side of me which has always lightly been made fun of, a side of me my logical mind didn’t let me fully embrace, a part of me I am in the process of rediscovering. In this collection of mixed-media abstracts, I’ve poured a part of me that I myself am in the process of accepting, so how do I trust others to accept it? The fear of rejection rears its head in these moments when you have not fully solidified your own beliefs and these moments in turn leave you vulnerable to having your beliefs questioned and create self-doubt.
It is this fear that had kept me from sharing this collection with the world until now. I feel ready to share this work not only because my spirituality is now fully rooted in acceptance, but also because I know that I poured the best of my energy into these paintings and I am proud of how they turned out. These paintings deserve to be displayed and celebrated, and so am compelled to put my fears aside and offer these to you.
The Root of Perfectionism
The vulnerability and fear are neatly presented with a bow of perfectionism, making it hard to uncover the underlying emotions. Perfectionism is nothing but a coping mechanism. It is like fever, more often than not it is a symptom, not the cause.
After spending a lot of time investigating the root of my perfectionism, I realised that it stems from the fear of not being good enough. Honestly, so many manifestations of perfectionism boil down to the fear of feeling like we’re not enough. Which either comes from comparing ourselves to others or having set unrealistic standards for ourselves, for me, it is the latter.
Now in my limited experience, these perfectionist tendencies don’t simply go away. The only way to take away its power is to show up imperfectly again, and again, and again, till you’ve gathered enough proof that you don’t need to be ‘perfect’ and that you can show up imperfectly and still get results.
So here I am showing up for myself and my art. My first collection, the first body of original paintings that I’m offering, is now available for purchase in my website shop. I hope you can feel the expansiveness of the energy these pieces were created with! May these paintings find a loving home and provide you with grounding and connection every time you look at them as you go through the motions of your everyday life.