Last year I was a panelist at Summerschool of BKKC. The purpose of Summerschool is to improve the entrepreneurship of artists in all kind of creative fields, from sculptors to flutists, from interior designers to painters.
The main obstacle for the present artists is to find enough clients. They all feel very creative, but in order to find clients, they have to come out of their studio or workplace to connect to real people. The best way to do so is to investigate the needs of possible clients, and look if your art can meet the needs. One of the most common needs is recognition, not only of you as artist, but of the client too.
“Recognition is the most requested emotion”, sights Yvonne Kroonenberg, a Dutch author. She herself is not interested in recognition. For her, recognition is too much about repetition without any thrill of surprise, marvel, abomination, fright or shock.
If you want to be a creative artist, you have to leave the safe path of recognition. How more successful you become, how more difficult it is. Look at successful musicians. Most of them try to repeat their former success by bringing it down to a formula they now imitate.
But the brilliant ones dare to keep inventing themselves, like David Bowie and Prince did. It is always a risk. The audience might not like what you are up to now. But if you don’t keep inventing yourself, you take the risk of loosing yourself, loosing your creativity.
Research has asked dying people what they regret. They didn’t regret what they did, the regrets were about what they didn’t do, the risks they didn’t take, the conversations they didn’t have, the steps they didn’t dare to take, the vocations they didn’t follow, the dreams they didn’t follow.
Do you dare to be creative? Do you dare to keep inventing yourself?