THE MAGAZINE / ART – Being an artist

Being an artist

by Desiree Maldonado

I have been an artist for a big part of my life. I was raised in a family with an artist mother that decided to leave her career to dedicate more time to her family. Since I can remember, I have had an extreme sensitivity in all aspects that allows me to sense the world under another perspective. It is like I have no other choice; every time I started doing something different, I felt I was not there, I didn’t feel my authentic self.

Anyway, it was a long way and took me time to decide to be engaged in more public ways of showing my creations and all the stuff I had been doing for some time.

For me, artists do not do art for selling; we do it because it is a need of expression, a need to say things that we cannot say in any other way. We do art because of the need to be creative and build a world that emerges in creations. It is a different need, a voice with usually no words, like a silent voice that says many things that periodically are shown. It depends mostly on our spirit and its ability to hear what that voice is saying.

In the last couple of months, I have experienced a significant change, and it is not a matter of thoughts, but instead a matter of a real change that comes up through my paintings and in my life in real situations.

I have always been more impulsive and spontaneous at making art, but now I need to master my art using the knowledge I have gained from my experience through the years. To make a painting usually takes some hours, but now it is taking me days or weeks, or even months. However, more time does not necessarily mean better quality. It means a style of making art, a way of painting. In my case, a matter of growing and becoming mature.

When you consider you are finally making a piece of art, believe me, you would not want to sell it unless the one who wants to buy it is the right person for that painting (you would feel it).

Most painters in the past, real artists, did not live by selling their art. They did have typical jobs to survive, or they had some mentors, friends, or relatives who loved their work and supported them financially.

It is great if you can live by making and selling art, and it is one of the reasons you have come to life, but it is not that you do it because your initial goal is selling.

I have sold art, several pieces, and it was fine, but I assure you that It was not my plan to make art to make a living, to be a commercial artist. I agree that if you had that possibility, it would be great. It is excellent if it comes naturally through your work and time, but I wouldn’t like to make art for selling from the beginning of my career. I am not judging people who do it, and if I ever do the same (just a thought), I would definitely want to separate the commercial art from the other. I am not sure though I could do that.

I could probably do some good business using my art, but at the time, I wouldn’t want to sell my paintings for some coins like potatoes, in a way that does not feel right. It probably sounds very romantic, but that is the way I feel. My art is my soul; it comes from my inner voice and is related to my real and essential way of being.