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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

How the Book "Ignore Everybody" Helps the Artist

What is an artist? I say it's someone who expresses themself creatively. In his book "Ignore Everbody", Hugh Macleod includes references to the creative person (artist in my terminology)in a broader sense which includes the creative person with a new idea to express, wether it be an idea for a business, a painting, a piece of music, a dance...the list could go on and on. Macleod is a cartoonist, though he wasn't always one. In a sense you could say there's an artist (or aspiring one) in all of us. We all have talents and skills of various kinds. The difference lies in what we choose to develop. Two ideas from this book stand out especially to help the artist/creative person. The first one he recommends is to not quit your day job, if you are starting a new creative project/idea, and the other is to keep your joy. He also shares his experience of well-meaning others in his life who tried to steer him in directions he didn't feel right about going. His concern was that following their suggestions would take away the simple joy he got from drawing his cartoons. This is always the concern of the truly creative person, in all walks of life is to maintain one's interest and spontaneity in their creative endeavor - even if it means keeping your day job.

6 comments:

  1. For some reason I'm not able to get the link working, but here's the link to this post.

    sivers.org/ie2

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  2. My 'day job' is an Artist and trying to keep it is hard enought ..... but I am not looking for any other 'day job' .....

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  3. Good for you! I'm sure you're glad for that blessing in your life. Some artists are not at that point where they can derive an income solely from their art form, of course, so they could stand with a little practicality as well encouragement, while they work in that direction.

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  4. To respond to your comment above. Statistics say that 80% of artists or more are not able to have a regular income with their art.
    I don't know what would happen to my art if I had to think about the bills continuously...but fortunately I'm not in that position.

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  5. Thanks for your input Jeanette. I can easily believe those statistics - especially with today's economy.

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