Today I'd like to write a little bit about authenticity. This might not be everybody's favorite topic but I think in this modern era with all of its myriad pressures that authenticity is the key to not only surviving but thriving.

The first question regarding authenticity would be how do you know if you're being authentic? The answer to this is, that for any of your actions you must really dig in and search out the motivations behind them.

Why are you doing the things that you do?

Is it for money? Recognition? Self-satisfaction? There could be any number of motivations behind your actions. An authentic person asks from a place of truth, from a place from a center within themselves that is not moved.

As human beings we are wired to not only live with other human beings but to accommodate the societal norms that are culture dictates. This starts with norms such as wearing clothes and not shouting obscenities in crowded grocery stores. I don't believe being an authentic person requires you to be an obscenity shouting nudist..

However, after these basic social conventions are addressed, we are left with another tier of responsibility/pressure that is applied to the individual by the culture in which they live. These might be things like you need to have a job. Or if you're an artist you need to sell your work in galleries etc.

Since I am a professional fine artist I'm going to speak to authenticity regarding this field of endeavor.

I had the good fortune to be a successful commercial illustrator for 13 years. In that time, all of the art that I created on the job was designed and intended for the marketplace. From the first thumbnail sketch, to the final coloration of any design, the marketplace was the primary determining factor in all aesthetic decisions.

I never had any issues with this arrangement. I was a skilled artisan and I was well-paid to perform a task. In a case like this, artistic authenticity does not necessarily apply. However, it's worth noting that any artistic activity performed under the yoke of commercialism is necessarily inauthentic.

Moving forward.

About 13 years ago I started my present occupation as a ‘professional fine artist’. I call myself a ‘professional’ because I sell my work and a ‘fine artist’ because I create work that comes authentically from my desire to create beautiful and enduring paintings.

I have my studio in an art center located in Northland New Zealand. In our art center we have a gallery and I've had the opportunity to see many shows there and to meet and interact with many 'fine artists'. In my opinion so many of them are artistically lost and their work, hopelessly inauthentic.

There's a lot of reasons for this but I think the primary reason is that society puts pressure on all artists to create work that will be popular and sell. I have no issue with creating popular and sellable artwork. Yet, that pressure brought to bear on a more inexperienced artists tends to muddy their thinking.

Over the years I've given a for instance story that goes something like this:

Say, you're a landscape painter and you love to paint rural scenes with trees and roads in them. One day you think ah, it might be interesting to do a painting of a boat. So you paint a boat and you put it in the window of your publicly accessible studio and what do you know, within hours of putting the painting in the window you have sold it!

How exciting. How rewarding!

You can use that money to buy some art supplies!

When this sale occurred you were just getting ready to paint another wonderful rural scene with a road and trees maybe some grass but since you see that the marketplace desires boat pictures, you decide instead to paint another boat picture. You do not really enjoy painting boats very much, as a matter fact you just thought you would give it a try for fun, but you definitely appreciate the acknowledgment of your artistic abilities and money is always good too.

So you paint several boat pictures and all of those boat pictures sell within days.

Meanwhile you're looking over at the rural landscape you started, that you were itching to get to, but you feel the pull. You feel the pull of the boat picture buying public. They want more boat pictures they have money and so you're inclined to paint even more. Until one day years down the road your work is featured on the cover of boat painter magazine!

Everyone who comes into your studio exclaims what a joy it must be for you to paint boats you're so good at it. Yet, deep in your heart you know that your boat paintings are not authentic and by extension you as a boat painting artist are also inauthentic. While you may have the accolades and extra cash you also feel troubled. Maybe when this feeling bubbles up you stuff it down as you drive to the boat painter's convention to receive an award for boat painting.

You get the point I love to use this idea as an illustration of how we as artists can get snared in traps that lead to inauthenticity. There's nothing wrong with making some accommodations to the market where you sell your art, especially if you don't particularly care what you paint and you just want to paint. But even in that case you may want to do red paintings but the market where you are demands you do blue etc.

At this point I should state that I'm not necessarily 100% convinced that the idea of an artist that creates artwork purely for ‘fine art’ is a true idea in and of itself. There has to be a middle ground struck between doing the thing that brings you ‘authentic’ joy and also accommodating society. I believe it is possible to do so but it comes with a price. That price is self knowledge.

So many times we just unthinkingly throwaway what it is that we authentically want to be and do in the name of pleasing others or making money.

In our modern culture this can happen so rapidly and automatically that without self-knowledge we might not even be aware what has transpired. When your authentic self and it’s motivations and desires are regularly sacrificed on the altar of financial gain or popularity, eventually you will cease to even have the capability to be authentic at all.

Once you've lost this capability what can be said about you as a human? What is your life worth then? What is your art worth if it comes only from a place of inauthenticity?

There's lots more to say about being authentic that doesn't pertain to creating art but because I am a professional fine artist and that is my primary mode of operating in the world it's easiest to use that to illustrate what I mean. I hope it helped you in some small way.

Anyway,

Take good care and stay out of trouble :-)

Mike

Authenticity

Illustration

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