Why Do Artists Struggle to Create Art That No One Will Ever See?

Artists are the most misunderstood and yet most inspirational group of people on the planet.

All photographs by the author.

Artists:

They work like dogs in the middle of the night, in the forgotten hours between family and work, in groups, and all alone.

With little to no recognition, but plenty of social judgment, they do it anyway.

Composers compose.
Sculptors sculpt.
Writers write.
Painters paint.
Designers design.
Photographers photograph.
Poets, architects, and basket weavers.
All of them are making stuff.

And the possibility of becoming successful is pitifully low. More than 85 percent will make less than a part-time income, while possibly four percent will make a decent living.

But they continue on.

Undeterred, and resolute.

And nearly all are invisible.

Artists spend years perfecting the creation of something impermanent.

A book with a shelf life of a couple of years.
A painting that can fade.
Poems that are forgotten in a few months.

Artists spend decades building skills in something that will be obsolete in our own lifetime.

We’ve seen it a lot as technology makes sweeping and broad changes.

Artists bleed, cry, and struggle over something that will be forgotten in a day or two.

The vast majority of what is created has never been seen by anyone.

Anyone.

Artists do these things without question, without remorse, and with full vigor.

Why?

Is it because we artists understand our own frailty, our very real mortality?

Perhaps.

But maybe it is also because we know we must make art.

For our time now.

There is no later, in fact, there is no promise of it at all.

There is now.

And we choose to make art.

Because making art makes us human.

This photo of me is by Carol Rioux, taken on a camera: light-painted in Calgary, BC.

Hi, I’m Don Giannatti, a photographer and mentor for up-and-coming photographers. You can find me on my website, Don Giannatti, and at my Substack site, where I also publish for creative people. All subscribers to my Substack have access to a free, long-form workshop on the business of commercial and professional photography.

You can’t view a publication these days without seeing articles wondering about all the changes that the world is going through. From post-pandemic confusion to the AI apocalypse, there is no shortage of scare articles designed to beat artists down.

Maybe that is just a part of selling news, but it is also based on things that are not necessarily true. Negativity sells.

Positive ideas get buried, chastised, or torn apart by the bitter commenters on Peta Pixel and Facebook.

These times make artists wonder where to turn.

Use Instagram, they say. Build a huge following there.

Yeah? Try it.

Start a newsletter and riches will follow, they say.

Really?

Rely on social media like YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Slack, and slide into those DMs like a boss, baby… that’s how you get known.

Hmmm…

Is that what you want to do?

Spend hours a day sliding into DMs and posting stuff on social media?

Or do you want to get serious about this thing, find the clients who need you, get gigs, get paid, rinse, repeat, again and again?

If the answer is yes, continue.

I call it a system.

The Client Acquisition System.

And it isn’t based on woowoo BS, social media stardom, “influencers”, or an “Easy, Done-for-You program that takes all the work out of the work” e-book you can buy and never read.

It’s a system.

Do this, then this, then this… measure; repeat again.

And yes, you have to tweak it a bit to fit your specific business, goals, aspirations, location, and taste.

But the facts are, it works.

I have taught it to many photographers, who can report that it works.

Photographers like Mark Manne, Carla McMahon, Eric Muetterties, and James Eisele.

It isn’t rocket science, there are no secrets, no alchemy, no magic easy button.

But there are tried and true methods that work when you try them, work the system, and build on your results.

Tomorrow, Friday, April 26, 2024, I will be giving a free webinar on how this works. It will have very little selling (although I will mention the program at the end), so it is a good 45 minutes of solid information you can take and begin to work with immediately.

We will have some time for questions and answers as well.

4 PM Pacific.

Bring your note-taking gear, and be open to the system.

This is the webinar page for you to check out.

I hope to see you there.

Link Here.