Well, let the rejection begin!

I’ve made a couple of art submissions, and both have been rejected. Yes, one was a provincial submission, and another was an international submission. Now, honestly, the provincial one I wasn’t surprised about, as it was a spur of the moment submission, not in my current style – I literally just threw it together. The other one was international, so the competition would be much harder,

However, when the provincial event started to share the artwork that had been accepted, I had mixed feelings about it. Yes, some of it was amazing… SOME of it. But not all. The shocking one was the international submission. I follow them on IG, so when they shared the artists that were accepted for their publication, I thought it would be nice to follow some of the artists.

Not a single one. I didn’t follow a single one of the artists that had been accepted.

I get it. Art is subjective. VERY subjective. And if there’s only a couple of jurors going through the submissions, it is likely that your art won’t resonate with one or both.

It’s HARD to not get frustrated.

It’s HARD to not want to change my style to something a little conventional.

It’s HARD to not get hard down on myself.

And I keep coming back to a couple quotes by Rebecca Campbell:

“Create, don’t produce. The world may push you to keep producing, but true magic comes from creating from within.”

And

“Be the mystic, not the machine. Stay in your potency and create for yourself, not for validation.”

I suffer from imposter syndrome. My father was very critical about my artwork – I wrote about it in a previous blog post “Change is Coming” from a couple of months ago, so I won’t go into it here. However, it does take a lot to not seek external validation and I’m certain that as much as I try NOT to seek it, every time I post a new painting, I’m hoping that “maybe this is the one that will go viral”. I look at so many other artists who (I felt) were on the same level as me… or possibly a lower skill level (cringe)… but they had tens of thousands of followers and sold their art for thousands of dollars… and I always think “WHY??? HOW???”

I know it’s a horrible mindset, but it’s hard, sometimes, to keep it out of my mind.

All I can do is to continue creating and staying true to myself, my vision, and my heart.