I had a thought-provoking conversation in the comments of last week’s Dealing with Disappointment post. Jack and I chatted on our capacity to deal with disappointment being correlated to our artistic vision. The gist of it: The stronger your personal vision, the less disappointments can effect you.

That rings true to me. The more I know why I create art and what I’m trying to achieve in my art, the less I care what other people think. Feedback from others is always colored by their personal values and opinions. If they have a different vision than mine for what art should look like, what it’s purpose is, then their feedback doesn’t need to be absorbed as truth. It can be registered and evaluated, then filed away if I decide it doesn’t apply to what I’m trying to do.

There is strength and clarity in having an artistic vision. It makes me sit up a bit taller, represent my art to others with confidence.

I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve had a clear vision of what I want to achieve in my art until sometime this last year. Or maybe I had one before and it shifted this last year. Either way, it’s taken lots of journaling, discussions with others, writing here, and looking critically at my art to help me clarify what it is I want to achieve with my art; to know what it is I want to express and communicate to others. I knew I had a vision when I could finally write an Artist Statement that rang true.

I certainly don’t always achieve my vision with the art I create. But it’s nice to have a personal standard I’m working toward. A goal for each piece. The artistic process becomes an ongoing cycle of “create, then evaluate,” deciding after the fact whether or not something fits my vision. I don’t want to mess up the creative process by putting too many judgments and filters on it up front, but I’ve discovered the pieces that end up in the long-term “keep” file are the ones that best fit my vision. Every time.

So, do you have an artistic vision? Do you know why you create what you create, and for whom? How did you get there? This is a worthy topic to give some thought to.