The Sweet Taste of Rejection
Its been awhile since I have written in here. Sorry about that. The world is totally upside down and I am just hanging on for dear life. This year has been weird for me. I have been struggling with burn out since about December and then decided to go the way of gallery applications for the use of my energy. I must say, putting your work out there to be judged by strangers is painful. It’s really hard. I actually kind of hate it. I have recieved two more rejection letters since I last wrote here. One of them I kind of expected but the other one took me by surprise. I was really sad. Its easy to believe that you’re not good enough when you get the emails rolling in abour your Denied work… Alas, I am still here. I am still painting. And I am still moving forward. It’s part of being creative.
You have to remember why you paint. You have to remember why you create. I was talking to another amazing artist a while back and it seemed that everytime I talked to her or looked on her Instagram she was getting another painting into a show and I was really struggling with seeing it. Not because I was jealous of her success or upset that she was getting in. Her work is amazing and she works hard. But I was more struggling with the idea of when will I be seen as good enough for galleries to want to carry my work? And she had some good adivce. She told me that you don’t know who is looking at your work or what they like, its a gamble submitting to galleries because you really don’t know. And that got me thinking, maybe its not so much about my work as it is about the eyes that see it. When you think of rejection as something outside of yourself it’s a little less painful.
That being said, everytime I get a rejection I go back to my work and look at it from a technical stand point and see what can I improve. Are the colours strong? Is the composition interesting enough? What does the painting really say? Is my field of depth deep enough? These are all things I can improve on because they come with skill development. Art is forever growing and shifting and that is a good thing.
Through all the rejecton letters that I have recieved I did get one acceptance!! It felt really strange to see that my painting was wanted at a gallery! I was shocked! I could hardly believe it! I didn’t want to get too excited incase they changed their minds. Oh, the joys of self doubt. In the end, whatever it is you do, you will never get into something if you don’t take the first step which is putting yourself out there. This year has been filled with rejection letters, but those letters are teaching me a lot about myself and my art skills. They are showing me that I am putting myself out there and growing. What can be sweeter than that?
-K