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One of my friends was telling me that he sees accomplished art around him and then feels insecure about his own work, to the point that he doesn't want to make anything. And I said 'do you feel that you are in competition with these other artists?'
He replied, bewildered, 'I suppose you are right, I feel like I'm competing, but then, that's not fair because I don't know what sort of competition I'm entering into.'
'Exactly,' I said, 'you don't know the criteria, if you and this artist were being judged for best depiction of say, 'Captain America with three explosions' maybe you'd lose. (but actually I liked his work better) It's the notion of being in competition with every other artist in the first place (living and dead) that is flawed.
I've juried shows, and I've had my work juried, and I can tell you now, it's a complete and utter crapshoot. Case in point.
I entered work into a show, and the judge chose a piece that was naive in concept and not very good in execution, and the judge told me 'I never select work that looks too polished and accomplished, I'd rather pick out the works that honestly aren't so good, so I can give the artist some encouragement.'
So my years of refining my technique made it impossible to ever win a prize from that judge, but that's how some judges think.
I helped a judge with a show and the first thing he said upon entering the gallery was 'toss out anything with purple, I hate purple.'
And I have juried shows where I've had to take out pieces for the simple reason that I only had so much space and I needed variety - most entries in this competition were black and white landscape photographs, I'd say 3/4 of the images - So I had to pare down to the best of the best of those, and then select work that had colour, or was abstract, in larger and smaller scales than standard.
You as an artist create work to your own very specific criteria, which means, you are only in competition with yourself, and there is always room for improvement.
And if you do enter any sort of competition, you have a better chance of standing out if you do something different, and even then, it's a crapshoot, being selected is great, but you'll never know the judges mind!
He replied, bewildered, 'I suppose you are right, I feel like I'm competing, but then, that's not fair because I don't know what sort of competition I'm entering into.'
'Exactly,' I said, 'you don't know the criteria, if you and this artist were being judged for best depiction of say, 'Captain America with three explosions' maybe you'd lose. (but actually I liked his work better) It's the notion of being in competition with every other artist in the first place (living and dead) that is flawed.
I've juried shows, and I've had my work juried, and I can tell you now, it's a complete and utter crapshoot. Case in point.
I entered work into a show, and the judge chose a piece that was naive in concept and not very good in execution, and the judge told me 'I never select work that looks too polished and accomplished, I'd rather pick out the works that honestly aren't so good, so I can give the artist some encouragement.'
So my years of refining my technique made it impossible to ever win a prize from that judge, but that's how some judges think.
I helped a judge with a show and the first thing he said upon entering the gallery was 'toss out anything with purple, I hate purple.'
And I have juried shows where I've had to take out pieces for the simple reason that I only had so much space and I needed variety - most entries in this competition were black and white landscape photographs, I'd say 3/4 of the images - So I had to pare down to the best of the best of those, and then select work that had colour, or was abstract, in larger and smaller scales than standard.
You as an artist create work to your own very specific criteria, which means, you are only in competition with yourself, and there is always room for improvement.
And if you do enter any sort of competition, you have a better chance of standing out if you do something different, and even then, it's a crapshoot, being selected is great, but you'll never know the judges mind!
