I was recently invited to be on a panel of artists from South Carolina to discuss creativity, sustainability and care as each topic relates to artists and their work. This was a “homecoming” event created by the SC State Museum, designed to bring the state’s artists and creatives together to be encouraged and edified.
These three topics are more or less continually on my mind as an educator of college level artists. Each year I have the privilege of teaching young artists how to adopt healthy studio practices as they prepare for creative lives after graduation. Part of my preparation for teaching includes staying current on best practices for artists in terms of mental and emotional health.
In this role as an educator, I have to be careful to balance my personal thoughts and beliefs with the current social dialog and research. As an older white male who was raised in the conservative South, I tend to see things a bit differently than many of my younger generational students. My goal is to provide honest and helpful advice that I actually believe in. Sometimes, this advice runs in opposition to the trending social media hashtags, “hacks” and sound bites.
I understood my role on the panel and how it differed from my role as an educator. On the panel, I was among peers who had very different life experiences, backgrounds and thus, advice. I was happy to offer my take while completely absorbing theirs. Many of them offered helpful and evidence based suggestions and I hope to share some with my students next year. I was happy that the suggestions and discussion points at this event were not just regurgitations of social media psychology and I hope that the SC State Museum will continue to host events like this in the future.
In the past few months, I’ve had more personal discussions with fellow artists about my work ethic, my general approach to studio practice and mental and emotional health. I am careful to make sure these friends understand that the advice or experiences I share are mine and that I only know that they work for me. I understand that I am different from you and pretty much everyone else. Like all the advice that we get, we should take what works for us and flush the rest.
Another thing to consider is that my advice may change radically over time. Let me explain…
In January of 2020, I started to have a bit of a moment with myself. I had just finished several seasons of a long, drawn out TV show and I realized I had quite literally wasted many digits of hours sitting on my butt, watching someone else tell me a story. I kept thinking that my time would have been better spent telling my own stories, and starting on January 1, that’s what I set out to do. By the time the world shut down in March, I had completed more new drawings than I had completed in recent years.
Being “forced” to be at home for the next 3 months heightened my awareness that I would not live forever and that, as an artist, I had work to do while I was here. I listened to a lot of music, I had a lot of fun outside, I spent a lot of time with my family and I created a LOT of art that year. I did not watch TV.
In the months that followed, I happily told people who asked (and many students who did not ask) that the TV was their enemy. This included YouTube, as I was just learning then that a whole generation of Americans had grown up depending on YouTube for everything from movies to TV shows, to DIY shorts. It was amazing to me how many hours they could watch YouTube in one day.
Full disclosure here: I have a long-standing beef with the TV. In college, I sort of woke up to the fact that my roommate and I were spending hours a day watching shows and movies in our dorm and only spending a fraction of that time working on our studio art projects. I did a little research on the topic for an Education course and immediately swore off the TV for the last 2 years of undergrad. To this day, I’m more of a deliberate TV viewer. I hate the idea of having the TV on for “noise” and I still believe that watching TV so much makes you dumber.
I understand that we need to update our terms for the world we currently live in. What I would have considered “TV” back in the day, could now easily be broadened to include video games, social media or simply “screens”. To the creative mind, all of these are obstacles that stand between you and a healthy studio practice.
When my kids grew into teenage years and started trending towards self-isolation in their rooms, the TV became a way of luring them out and spending some fun time together. My daughter and I started watching silly things together and this became a nightly habit. Soon we lured my son out of his room to join us and to this day, we have a pretty regular nightly time together watching something on the big screen in the living room.
So if you ask me today if you should spend time every night watching TV, I would tell you no. I would suggest that doing so would be an impediment to a healthy studio practice for most artists. And I might even tell you this while I’m sitting in front of the TV, spending time with my kids. Because for me, right now, this is the healthiest thing I can be doing.
Of course, I’m also disciplined enough to set aside a large amount of time each day for creative work. I’m still creating unprecedented amounts of new drawings and sculptures and also having a very respectable number of exhibits of my work. I know what I can do and how I can carve away time to spend with my family. Just like GI Joe said in those 1980s feel-good commercials, “knowing is half the battle”.
I can talk with a middle aged artist and suggest that the way to stay healthy as a creative is to know yourself and schedule your days accordingly. I can assume that in 40 or 50 years of practicing being a human, that the other person has a pretty good idea of who they are. This doesn’t work as well with 20 year old students. But perhaps this is a good reminder for us all.
I don’t have the advice you need to be successful. The 20 year old YouTuber or IG influencer doesn’t have the answer to your problems. What works for us may not work for you. In fact, it most likely won’t. We are different people with different experiences and different needs. Yes, TV will actually rot your brain (and habitual viewing is also terrible for your physical health) but there are days when watching a funny show for 15 minutes is exactly what you need. I work and go all the time but if you try that, you might die, and I’m only half kidding.
What we all need is to know ourselves. Be honest with yourself. What do you want? What are you willing to do to get it? Did you make progress toward it today? What will you do to make progress toward it tomorrow? Is what you’re doing right now helping? Are you treating yourself in a sustainable way to reach your goals?
Another thing that deserves its own paragraph is that you are constantly framing your own narrative. If you see yourself as not being enough, not being lucky, not being successful, you will become all those things. If you see yourself as hard working, grateful, blessed and achieving, you will become all those things. Take a day and pay attention to yourself narrative. How do you talk to yourself? How do you tell your story to your friends and family? You are in the process of telling your story. It will eventually happen just as you’re telling it. See yourself as meeting your goals through discipline and hard work. See yourself treating yourself well and being kind to yourself. You will become your story.
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