“It’s been nearly three years since I last wrote in this blog, and since then, many things have happened. The one big thing that has happened is a realization that to break into the art world and get recognized, you need to market yourself, and that is one thing which I find difficult to do.
Even though my background will show that I have advertising and marketing experience, that I have created campaigns and developed publications, even provided campaigns for clients, the one person which I cannot market is myself, in the arts. A lot of soul-searching has gone on, and the realization is that when it comes to the arts, my own relationship with it is my own barrier.
You might love doing it, creating, and come to enjoy and feel content when you have finished a piece, but when a few days have passed, you will look at it and every detail on it will be examined. The very thing that actually makes us develop our work and get better is the very thing that makes you dislike your own work. Whilst our own assessment of our own work is not a bad thing, actually it is probably the best thing you can have because if you believe your work is perfect, then you can forget about going further because you won’t be trying to do so.
It is also the one thing which will be your own soul destroyer if, like me, you lack that edge of confidence. Sometimes you wonder, and I am sure you do too, why others get to succeed or make something out of their art but you can’t. With my grey hairs now establishing themselves firmly, I suppose I do have some right to air my own opinion on why; experience after all is “wisdom,” they say.
And one thing you find is that those who do make something out of their art are mainly those who put themselves out there and show their work and are not scared to take on the spotlights. Most of us don’t do that. Either we do not have the chance, or we shun away from it. After all, if you consider why we do our art, it’s probably because it is our own world we enter into where we can speak our minds, be it on a canvas, a piece of paper, or our creations (whatever that might be). And it’s not something we are shouting about or wish to shout about.
But, and that is the big but (even though I will be reminded you don’t start a sentence with ‘but’), it is exactly what we should be doing, shouting and talking about our work if we want to be recognized for it. So during the past months, after a lot of soul-searching, wondering how I will go forward, assessing what I am doing, and where it is all going, I came to a realization.
Firstly, I am useless at promoting myself. Secondly, my work is mediocre to me, so I need to continue developing it, but at the same time, there are people out there who like my work so the reality is that I should not be the one assessing my own work when it comes to showing it. It should be someone else. Thirdly, that I am too chaotic and too liberal in the routes I take and should structure myself at least in some areas.
Follow a project line for a while, produce some type of coherent collection, focus on a style even if it’s just for a few weeks, find out what styles suit me best and I am most comfortable with. So yes, there was a lot of thinking. But (and again I start with a ‘but,’ y mira que soy periodistas me dicen), I needed to find that person who would help me. And (and yes I have also started with an ‘And’), that person was standing in front of me.
My work has during the past decade been aimed at one thing, that while I am not rich, I’m not even moderately financially stable (in this day and age you can describe me as poor), and since I have had so many tumbles, falls, and chaos in my life, when I die, I will probably have very little left to leave behind, that I should at least leave behind my work as a minor legacy for my children.
So, since I cannot afford an art promoter, agent, or marketing person, and I do have someone around me intelligent enough to pick up and build on ideas to start making it work, who better than to get that same person to work alongside me. So my son Aaron now handles my work. He has no deadlines, no targets, no anything except all my work, and it is up to him to make it work.
One thing I know is that today I am writing this because that is one of the things he has already made a change in, guiding me to promoting my own work and talking about it. Now this blog might not exist for longer, we are still discussing it, but I have reactivated it today because I wanted to light that spark and I wanted to tell people what I am doing and with this maybe I can also help someone by showing them that they are not the only ones who feel the way they do.
Because out there, among the so many talented artists, and social media has shown us that there are millions of talented people out there, most of those talented people do make it, don’t get recognized, and don’t know why or what they have to do. And the answer is not to give up and think you are not good enough, the answer is that that is the reality but if you cannot do it yourself, find help and allow those who support you and believe in you to help you forward. It might work, and it might not work.
But it’s better than putting your tools down and walking away and thinking why do I even bother. You bother because, whether people see your work or not, like it or not, believe in it or not, it is your voice, and you must never silence that voice because it is you.”
stephenignacioart 
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