Art Vs Business
It never occurred to me to be an artist. As in, it never occurred to me, when setting up my business, that art could be a part of it. I was very focused on having a capital-B Business – on the growth, on the statistics, on the upward linear achievement, on the money. A lot of that is due to capitalism, and age. A lot of it is due to having something to prove to everyone in my life that going self-employed wasn’t a ridiculous mistake. But it’s also because I didn’t consider artistry as something that was possible for me.
As a teenager I’d wanted to pursue photography, and in my third year of university I’d wanted to write, but in both cases I’d given it up for things I was better at, things that were more sensible. I gave up art after GCSE because I got better grades in the humanities; I gave up the idea of writing soon after graduation because I found myself in a proper job.
When it became part of my job to take photos for Instagram and write posts for my blog I saw it as an empowerment thing, a “hey look, now I’m finally doing it”. But it was a self-limiting consolation prize. It was me telling myself that a small amount of art was ok as long as it was in service to a bigger agenda. It was me telling myself to be happy with the scraps of art I was giving myself. It was not allowing myself to break out of the business box I’d given myself to live in.
Because it wasn’t really artistry. It was creativity by numbers, making things with the sole purpose of them “doing well” – getting more likes than the day before, driving traffic, getting sign ups. It wasn’t about humanity, and connection, and truth.
Lately I’ve gone the other way. I became disenchanted, and then disengaged, from the capital-B Business. I stopped checking the statistics, I stopped looking at how “well” a post had done, I stopped checking my newsletter subscribers. I began writing, not to drive an action in a customer but as an expression. I listened to podcasts about art, I read about craft and writers. I opened the box and allowed myself to step out of it, allowed myself to consider a writerly, artful life as one that was available to me.
Which sounds very positive right? But as part of this process I also stopped trying to make money. Not consciously, of course, not on purpose, but because I didn’t want to do the business-y things I slowly stopped doing them and didn’t do anything else instead. I wanted to be free to pursue the writing I wanted to do whilst conveniently ignoring that the people that do the writing they want to do also have jobs so they don’t die.
And because this happened gradually, this stopping making the money, I got used to it. I got used to being able to afford less and less. I got used to things not being an option for me financially. And that meant, I got used to - I accepted - a smaller life than the one I wanted.
My problem is so often the overcorrect. The turning of the steering wheel of my life in a too acute angle away from what I don’t want but not towards anything real and specific and doable. Sometimes this means that I damage the tyres, sometimes it means I have to find a way back onto the road and sometimes I roll the whole thing. I think that’s what happened in this case. I rolled the car and was too dazed to realise that it had even happened.
At the root of this overcorrect are beliefs I obviously yet unknowingly hold about the nature of both art and business, and what they “have to” be. Two ribbons of different colour, one embroidered with freedom, expression, low financial security and the other with pressure, narrowness, affluence. I’ve been holding these two ribbons at arm’s length from each other, while at my feet curls a third – the ribbon of my desires embroidered with ambition, abundance, fulfilment. I’d been worrying so much about art vs business that I’d forgotten all about it.
Because it’s not art vs business. It’s art as business; it’s business as art. It’s “what else might be possible outside of the outdated beliefs?” It’s adding new embroidered words to the ribbons – possibility, enjoyment to the business one, opportunity, commitment to the art one. It’s taking all three ribbons, running them through my fingers, and beginning to turn them into a braid.
