Put Art Behind - My New Art Webstie

Despite that I always know that art is not the best for me as a life time endeavor, and feel that art profession for me is overall like a very unhappy marriage which hindered many other interest of mine, I am still proud of what I've done in this field, professional or none professional wise.

Having not being able to focus on reading or writing for a while (due to my physical condition), I decided to re-organize my art works and put some of them into multiple art sale places to try my luck. I don't hold much hope on this task as I know art sale never is easy, especially, for a "retired" artist like me, who would not likely create many more works. I do this mostly just to put a big period mark to my past. I may paint or draw again sometime, but I am more than happy to move along, spend my rest of my life for something I wanted to do so badly but couldn't because of "art".

Goodbye art! No matter how many unhappy - sometime even miserable - moments we had together, I am willing to keep only happy ones in my memory, like how I remember Savannah.

My updated art blog (not completely done yet):
Mei's Art Works

No, I Am Not Grateful To My Parents

I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. (Photo credit: Aristocrats-hat)

Every once in awhile there were always people telling me, or implying to me, that I should be grateful to my profession, naturally, grateful to my parents, for at least I could make living by doing portraits or teaching art. But NO, I am NOT grateful to my profession, nor to my parents, because 1, if I were, I grant what my parents did to me, and  that's something I would never ever do, simply because child abuse is wrong; 2, making living never was a problem to me, and if it appeared to be once or twice, art was precisely the cause, not the solution.

My fighting to get away with art profession was not because of my resentment to my parents (if it was, it's only during the moments when I was extremely weak, which I openly admit, because I am human), but my clear "knowledge" of myself. Since very young age, I knew what kind of intelligence I had and what kind of person I wanted to be. My current "negotiate" with art profession is just a temporary refugee, due to my middle age health "disaster", which lasts more than a decade. This "negotiation" doesn't mean I have given up my "dream", neither it means I would feel miserable if I cannot reach my "dream". I found peace with myself and my fate, include the fighting part - which means I would still fight whenever I can.

Talking about gratitude, there are lots of things in my life I feel grateful for, but mostly, I feel extremely grateful and lucky for my positive nature, which was the reason I survived from a extremely "sick" and poisonous family, and still be able to love life. I am also grateful for being able to living in this country, where I could live freely, think and talk freely. And there are lots more, which are not necessary to be mentioned in this short post.

Another day we had discussion in BC about what's the mantra for life, here is mine: know what you want, try your best to get it, and if you fail, find peace with it, but never give up without a try (fight).

Profession And Passion

Andre Agassi Tennis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I once talked to an acquaintance of mine about Agassi's tennis carrier, how painful he felt about it because it was chosen by his authoritative father, this acquaintance said: "But he could not make such money if he chose any other careers than tennis."
I cannot count how many this type of people I've met in my life, so I had this "conclusion" this morning:

Those whose choices of profession were solely based on money have no slightest idea what passion is.

I Am Not An "Artist" - Profession And Confidence

Identity conceptual view (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For all my life I have been "identified" as an "artist", even though art would be the last profession I would choose (if I had freedom to choose). This, really had been my "life time" problem and once dragged my confidence straight to the bottom.

Don't get me wrong. I love art. Van Gogh's paintings would move me into tears. And occasionally, if I painted something I felt satisfied, I would stare at them for long time. But, I don't think I am that type of artists who could devote their entir lives to art. Very unfortunately, many times in my life, I had to spend too much time doing "art", just for making living. That's why once I called myself "an artist by misfortune".

Now I am not going to write about how I fought with my monstrous fate, instead, I like to touch a little bit about how a person's social identity affect his/her personal confidence.

One of contemporary psychologists (I forgot his name) believed that when people reached their adult life but still did not approve their professions, they would easily get into a troubled state of mind called "professional identity disorder", and it would strongly affect their confidence. I don't know about others, but this theory sounds 200% true to me!

After I entered middle age, I trapped into a job that I would never imagine I would possibly choose: custom portraits. Despite the overwhelming compliments I received everyday, my confidence simply collapsed, especially during the periods that I had no idea how I could escape. During that "dark middle age" I simply could not help to think that my life was a total waste, because what I loved to do, such as pursuing knowledge, pondering the mystery of life, day dreaming, wondering, all had no chance to get into my daily schedules. I also developed a strong psychological problem: social anxiety. I had problem to be with people who I loved to be with, because I had trouble to face their confidence. I also refused to get into any possible love relationships. I blew away numerous beautiful chances, because I simply did not know who I was.

Now, I no longer had such intense sense of lost, because first, I learned to accept the fact that my fate is more powerful than me; second, I found a way to "squeeze" majority of my time for my freedom, during which I don't have to bother with "art". Gradually, I found myself happy, and accordingly, my confidence came along.

I also found, since we humans are social animals, our social confidence would be fully installed inside us when our professional identities approved by both ourselves and others. I had long term problem with my social life, because when I was well accepted by others, I was an "artist" whom was not accepted by myself; when I acted as a "none- artist", (some) people would choose to stay away from me because they did not believe that's who I was (I was gently criticized as "don't know how to appreciate what I have"). This conflict once brought me so much trouble. It is still on going in my current life, but not so much problems any more.

Probably some people don't mind much about what they do, or not do, but I found my happiness is quite closely related to it. I simply cannot imagine myself doing something repetitively like a machine. And the more freedom I have, the happier/more confident I am. I have reason to believe, that our true confidence is in direct proportion to our happiness. From this point of view, logically, we could say that our professions, which take majority time of our lives, do affect the overall quality of our lives, thus our happiness and our confidence, more or less, directly or indirectly.