I want to share some thoughts that have been going through my mind lately. Partly just to get them out of my head, but it’s about my journey to become an artist. A path I’m still on and I’ll probably be on for quite some time. You see I never believed I had what it takes to be an artist. That was someone else. Someone that had talent. Not me. I’ve spent most of my life feeling that way. I’ve always had to have a “real job” to support my family. Everyone knows that you can’t make a living as an artist. Right? And if we don’t know it, friends and family are more than happy to inform us that you can’t. Plus a lot more reasons why I couldn’t, shouldn’t even consider being an artist. I know they mean well, but damn, let me find out for myself. I believe we all have an artist inside us. Buried so deep in some of us that we couldn’t see it with a microscope. But the artist is there. If you’re lucky, like I was, someone comes into your life that believes in your ability or they just encourage you to open yourself to the possibilities. That’s what happened to me. She encouraged me, she nagged me, (in a nice way), but she helped me to believe that maybe I could be an artist. I’m starting to take pride in what I produce, but it’s been a slow process. You just have to keep at it. Work at it. It doesn’t come easily or naturally. Doubt sits on my shoulder almost every day. Some days it yells in my ear, others it’s just a whisper, but it’s always there. I’m trying to learn to tune it out. Not easy. Not easy at all. I feel a strong need to slow down, to quiet my thoughts. Only then can I be the artist that I want to be. To create the art I feel trapped inside beneath the layers of busyness and the outside world’s intrusion. The artist that is inside is trapped by the worlds expectations and judgement’s handed down by people that we think are smarter or more talented than us. Art doesn’t have to meet anybody’s expectations. It only has to make me happy. No one else. If it does, great! If not, to hell with them. I don’t care. Somewhere in the mix, happiness has to play a part. Otherwise why am I here?
JKFrancis Photography Blog 