You are not a real artist!

This reflection is not the easiest thing to write, but it is one of the most important ones I've written in a long time. It is a gift to a future me who tends to forget over and over again what I am about to share with you. Someone in this world may need this reminder as much as I do. So, I'm carving those words out on a virtual wall like cavemen carved out their life experiences with their bare hands before me. People from the past who painted on the uneven stone walls of their dark caves didn't know or even hope for their creations to last millennia. I don't think they even thought about such a thing; they were living the now while unknowingly leaving behind something that would fascinate future generations - art.

The story I am about to tell is the kind that one tends to write in a diary and hide away from the world's eyes. We tend to conceal things that show too much of who we truly are. We do it out of fear of being judged or misunderstood. Vulnerability is a blessing and a curse. It calls for the mountains of bravery or an ocean of desperation. I got both things floating in my veins this afternoon, so I'm typing as fast as possible.

2023 was the most challenging year in my life so far. It felt like all I was doing was trying to survive, fighting myself back from the overwhelming darkness of depression and severe burnout. Some days, I genuinely questioned whether I could win this battle. I walked the earth overwhelmed with guilt, hopelessness, and self-eating. My physical health started crumbling like a sugar cookie. I didn't have the energy to do anything except be in that darkness, allowing my eyes to adjust. I've learned that if one stays still and looks in the darkest night, she can see that the sky is full of stars.

I started questioning everything - whether I was a good partner, human, or artist.

An artist is powerful when he has limitations. - Odilon Redon

I read those words last week from an old library book of Redon's notes on life, art, and artists, and they have circled in my head ever since. Last Tuesday, while taking my mom-in-law to The Met, I stumbled upon a little room full of his dreamy pastel paintings.

' My limiting mind is my power!' - I thought. The human mind has an incredible ability to build the most obscene limitations one could ever imagine. It has the power to make me believe in them as if those self-imposed barriers are genuinely there when, in reality, they are no more than castles made out of sand. The stone walls I lock myself in are merely a product of my imagination.

Since I started doing art full-time (about nine years ago), I've been wrestling with the infinite limitations my mind (embodied in the shape of an inner critic) was throwing at me.

You are not a real artist! - he would say with the look of a professor. Inner critic comes in different forms - in the shape of a traumatic experience, an insensitive thing repeated by parents, teachers, or friends at times when all we needed was love and encouragement. It may put on many faces, but the goal is one - to make us believe that we are less than others, to keep us locked within the safe limits of our DIY cages, which we sometimes gently call our comfort zones.

My inner critic would say that a real artist must have an art degree or/and a gallery representation, solo shows, a studio (preferably a loft) with tall ceilings and white walls in an artsy neighborhood. It insisted that the real artist is the one who sells his paintings and can make a living out of his art, and so on. No matter how hard I tried to fight those beliefs, my mind seemed to have an unlimited throve of the new, more elaborate ones. So, the battle went on and off, often leaving me defeated. I felt like a winner only when I sat down to create.

Despite all the challenges this year, I gained enough bravery to apply for an art residency I've been dreaming about for a few years. Multiple artists I know did it and shared the profound experience of being there, and everyone encouraged me to apply. So, I did. I spent about a week filling out an application carefully, trying to answer questions from the heart.

The application allowed me to dive deeper into my creative practice, defining what it means to have it in my life. I was thrilled. But… I didn't make it. The rejection letter invited me to apply again. To say I was devastated is not to say anything at all - my ego was bleeding so badly. It took time to heal my confidence.

Later this year, I applied again. And there was another rejection letter encouraging me to re-apply next year. I met it with what seemed stoic wisdom but found myself a walking mess a day and a half later. What I actually did was shovel my pain so deep inside into my subconscious that it'd be hard to feel anything at all. Instead of disappearing, it manifested into an impossible irritability and unhappiness. Not allowing myself to admit how hurt I truly felt was like swallowing a pill with a slow-action poison.

Yesterday, I received a voice message from a friend. About a month ago, I gifted her one of my paintings for her birthday. She said that the night before, a crazy fire burned down a building next to her, leaving multiple families unhurt while burning down everything they owned. When the neighboring buildings started catching fire, she ran home and frantically packed things into a suitcase. I was looking around my place and thinking - she said - what are the most important and meaningful things I can't allow to burn down? I wanted you to see what I chose! The following was a picture of her wide-open suitcase. And there it was, looking straight at me, shining like a little star with its gold detailing - my painting... She wanted me to know that she chose it as one of the most important things to save during a time of danger.

This morning, the inner boiling reached a point when it felt unbearable. I found myself exploding from within for a reason I couldn't understand. It felt as if my veins were filled with sparkling water instead of blood, and the bubbles made me itch from the inside. I went to meditate. No, I ran to sit on my cushion.

Meditation allows me to connect to my true self. When I sit, it feels like I'm free diving through the levels of conditionings and stories I (or the world) told myself to be true straight into the ocean depth, right to where my truth resides. And when I do that, I bask in it, grab it with both hands and eat as much of it as possible before returning to the surface.

An hour passed, like fifteen minutes. I opened my eyes, and suddenly, it dawned on me - two days ago, a person was running for her life, and my painting was one she had chosen to take. My system needed some time to process what happened before connecting the dots. Tears filled my eyes and streamed down my cheeks like oceans. This very moment healed the open wound. It ended up being more potent than any other remedy I tried.

While looking for external validation that I am a real artist, that my art is worthy even if I had the shittiest year, even if it doesn't allow me financial stability, the Universe showed me in the most direct way possible that someone considered it to be worth saving from the fire.

I wrote this down to remind myself that I don't need to wait for external approval and that, as a creator, I am enough just the way I am. I find it beautiful that sometimes we do need a direct reminder like the one I had to wake us up from an illusion.

The Universe is kind enough to send them from time to time to rescue us from the imaginary dragons while we stumble from one wall to another in a castle built of sand.

Photo by Alexandra Vainshtein