You have to laugh ...

Increasingly I've noticed a harshness creeping into our public discourse and nowhere is this more evident than on social media. It's no longer enough to simply disagree with someone or dislike something - now that person or thing has to be wrong, evil or stupid. And they have to be told!

As some of you know, I've been working on some self-portraits recently. Some of them are quite abstracted and that has caused some consternation, particularly on Facebook. Once upon a time, nasty comments upset me. That was before I understood that comments are never about us but always about the commenter.

Think about it ... when was the last time you stopped by someone's Facebook page to tell them 'your art is shit' or 'this is awful.' I don't need you to answer. I know the answer is 'never.'

That's because you're kind and sane and relatively comfortable with yourself and your place in the world.

But imagine that you were angry, small-minded, frightened, and desperate for someone to blame for all your troubles. No-one likes to feel those things, so you would need to cast around and find someone to project them onto. You'd need to judge others harshly, you'd need to fling insults out, and you'd need to keep doing it so that you didn't have to actually experience those feelings inside yourself.

That's when you'd come to my facebook page and see this:

Then you'd write something like:

"Call this art? My kid does better than this at pre-school"

or:

"If that's a self-portrait, I feel sorry for your husband."

or:

"You must be sick in the head."

LOL

And I do mean "LOL." It no longer makes me sad to read things like this - it just makes me shake my head.

But I am sharing this to ask you: How would you feel if this was you? What would happen inside your body if you opened Facebook to find 10 comments like this?

Would it hurt you? Would it make you less likely to share your work next time?

I think about this a lot because I work with a lot of artists who are fairly new to painting or drawing. They are still in the phase of seeking external validation and even one comment like this can completely throw them off course. And even some experienced artists wilt when faced with hatred or ignorance.

And the problem is that ignorance and hatred seem to be on the rise around the world. Hateful people have been empowered to say things out loud that used to remain in the darkest recesses of their ugly minds. 

Meanwhile, as artists, we are sensitive souls by nature. We feel things deeply and we care about our work very much. How do we then deal with a harsh world? How do we share our work fearlessly and without apology while also protecting our feelings?

The answer of course is that we must not care what other people think. Easier said than done, I know.

But I've been thinking about why these comments don't touch me, other than the mild annoyance of having to delete them. What is the difference between the old me, who would have cried and then become afraid to post, versus the me of today who doesn't think twice and carries on regardless.

I think it's this: I'm much clearer now about what I want to make and who that might appeal to. And because I know who might like it, I also know who won't. The kind if people who like my art probably also like artists such as Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Jason Craighead, Tracey Emin or Jean-Michel Basquiat. While I am not in their league, I do love their work and strive to reach their standards. 

yet these artists are ridiculed frequently by people who don't understand their work. If an individual can't understand their genius, he definitely won't like my paintings!

Knowing this brings a sense of peace that's harder to achieve at the beginning, when you're still trying to figure out what you want to do and for whom.

But perhaps, if you are one of the people who is still struggling with negative reactions to your work, you can take some comfort in simply knowing that NO artwork appeals to everyone. Even Van Gogh, Shakespeare, and the Beatles had plenty of people who didn't like their art.

So this week, I hope you'll join me and Vincent and William and John, Paul, George and Ringo in saying "to hell with what other people think, I'm just going to make what I want to make."

After all, it worked out OK for them :)