Your Art and Who Cares About It.

Learning to appreciate the people who framed and proudly displayed that hideous still-life you painted when you were thirteen.

If an artist I admire tells me they like one of my drawings, I get a dopamine wallop like a mallet to the face.

This happens from time to time, but not so often that I can count on it to buoy me for the rest of the month, much less the rest of my life.

And really, isn’t it strange to expect such praise on a regular basis?

Yes, of course.

But we live much of our lives in a virtual wasteland dominated by platforms that present us with infinitely scrolling timelines, training us to worship at the altar of likes and thumbs-up. It’s horrific, but normalized.

No matter how accomplished you become in your field, your professional peers won’t always be there to provide you with encouragement and validation. They have to nurture their own creative processes, promote their own work, and often, compete for the attention and commissions you, yourself, are seeking.

But there is a group of people in your life that have been cheering for you from day one, and will never stop cheering for you for as long as you live.

I’m talking, of course, about your friends and family.

“My friends like my stuff, but that doesn’t count ...”

Have you heard other artists, musicians, or writers say this? Have you uttered these words, yourself? Have you said the same words and replaced the word, ‘friends,’ with, ‘family?’

You may have, and you needn’t feel guilty about it. It’s perfectly normal to take your friends’ and family members’ praise for your creative work for granted. After all, they love you.

But that love is everything. In fact, I believe it is the genuine love and affection of your family and friends — not the admiration of your peers, heroes and colleagues — that will sustain you over the course of your creative life.

Consider this: who are the first people an actor thanks when they win an Academy Award? Mom, Dad, children, grandparents. Even if these are the not the first people they thank, when they do get around to thanking family members, this is always the moment they start crying.

Why? Because it is the support of the people who are closest to them — the ones they took for granted — that actually means the most, in the end.

Your closest friends and family are the only ones who tell you that you are great when others ignore you. They are the ones who tell you that you CAN, when others dismiss you. They make up the true foundation of your confidence and determination.

Friends, family, spouses, partners — they genuinely want you to succeed for no reason other than to see you happy and fulfilled. Can you say this about anybody else in your life?

It may be nice to earn the recognition of your peers, and it may help you to feel like you are ‘in’ or that you have made it. But fashions change, opinions change, and such praise can never be counted on to arrive when you hope for it.

The next time a loved one tells you they adore your latest creation, remember: these words they have spoken a thousand times before are like a thousand tiny gusts of wind in your sails, carrying you to here and now and beyond.

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Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, remember to be kind, and I’ll say, Ciao for now.