Translated from the original Spanish text of my chapter from “Empresariales: Una manera de estar en el mundo”
The life of an artist is a long, weary and challenging journey with lots of sacrifice on the way. It is also the greatest gift ever – the gift of living your life to the fullest, of burning all your heart, your soul and your passion for the sake of creating art. Artists, such as painters, photographers, sculptors, actors, designers may have a life that seems very sparkling from the outside, but behind the scenes there are many moments of hard work, desperation, struggle, feelings of defeat and losing hope along the way.
Artists are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day- to-day rejection in one year than most people of other professions do in a lifetime. Many artists, especially in the beginning of their career face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, and they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a vain dream. But many choose to live that life: a life full of glorious moments when their art is recognized by the public, and that moment feels like a candle shining light into a dark hole.
My experience during the past four years as a fine art photographer has been the most exciting journey of
my life that I feel greatly thankful for. I´ve had the chance to work with a variety of creative people from
different backgrounds and learnt a lot from every experience. I have worked on over 100 photo sessions
and have worked with most probably 500 artists of different kinds (models, make-up artists, hair stylists,
fashion designers, stylists, film makers, assistants etc). I have created thousands of different photographs
through many thousands of working hours both in teams and alone by myself when I am alone creating the painting-inspired photographs out of the raw materials.
In the first years that I started photography, whenever I wanted to give up, I always remembered the words a good friend said: “If you give up now, you will lose everything you have done so far. However, if you decide to continue walking on this path, there is a small chance of success, you never know when you will get there, or if you will ever get there, but you have to keep trying and it because you love what you are doing, so let your passion guide you.” I learnt that the only way to get through is to keep trying and loving what you do, defeats should only make you stronger. And as time went by, I take each refusal as a daily habit and keep walking my way, having in mind that even the famous painter Van Gogh only sold 1 painting when he was alive out of the almost 900 paintings he created during his life time.
Having lived my life both as a businesswoman and an artist, and having gone through struggles of both
worlds, I would say that if you want to succeed in the corporate world, you mostly need to have your feet
on the ground and to focus your mind on your job. But being an artist means that you have to put your heart, your soul, and even your vulnerability into your art. Your whole being has to burn in the process of creating art. When you first walk down this artistic journey, it is important to have in mind that it is not about earning money, it is about a sincere desire of touching the hearts of the audience, making them fall in love with your art, and finally you end up earning a living through selling your artwork or having commissioned projects. Creating an artwork and falling in love have one important thing in common: it is ‘a voyage into a secret harbor’. If you give it the attention, passion and tenderness it deserves, it will open up to you its petals, enriching your life, giving it a new, deep meaning. But that will happen only when you’re allow your mind to understand that getting close to a mystery of a true love is just like getting close to a real, exquisite piece of art.
A great deal of sacrifice will be necessary on the way. A real artist who is in love with what she does will
most likely spend much time alone: many thousands of hours by herself immersing in the world of her own imagination, inner dreams, and illusions and paint this into the art. There is a controversial argument in the art world that great artists can’t be mothers. Why? Because an ambitious and passionate artist is fervidly dedicated to her art that there’s no room in her life for motherhood. Indeed, some of the greatest female visual artists: Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo, and Yayoi Kusama etc had no children. Kids and their constant battery of needs, as the argument goes, are incompatible with true creativity. Art is supposed to be an all-consuming enterprise, so is being a mother. Artists who dream big, argue that they want to either be 100 percent mother or 100 percent artist. Mothers are too “emotionally torn.”
The most important thing is to keep on going, there will be many rejections and failures in the beginning and even later on after you’ve reaped success, it´s essential to accept that and to keep on walking, like a pilgrim that wanders through different lands without knowing where they are going, but they enjoy the process. Sometimes, the joy comes from not knowing the future and keep imagining how it will be. Isn´t it that a great part of an artist is have a rich imagination and a heart full of love and hope? You truly have to believe in yourself, love what you do, and most of all, and create art for the sake of beauty and with all your sincerity and honesty. Art should come from the soul, from your own being, your way of life and your desire of leaving part of you to the world every single day.
(Viet Ha Tran, July 2017)
