Hi everybody, welcome back to the Artist Tao podcast. We're here with Sean Starr and I'm Jenny and working on our next principle, define your own success. Never measure the level of your success as an artist by financial gain. Define what success means to you and let that be your guide.
I think that's a really sovereign approach. What do you mean by sovereign?
Well, we make our own choices, right? I can be at the effect of what I'm thinking or what I'm defining in my life, or I can pause a minute and create something different. Yeah, and I think it's a universal truth that if you're not making those choices, someone else is going to make them for you. So it's really important to...
We talk about this a lot actually with choices we've made in our living lifestyle, where we live, how we want to approach life in the next say, five, 10, 20 years. What does success mean to us? That's something that we discuss a lot, not only individually, but as a couple. And I think that's a really great way to look at it. What does success mean to you?
Yeah, and it took me years to figure out that if you're not creating those definitions or identifying those definitions in your own mind, you're just kind of floating around. And...
I think it's extra important for a person who's working as an artist to look at those issues because you're sharing something, if it's being done right, because you're sharing something that's really at the core of who you are. If you don't have it sorted out, as far as things like defining success, Uh, it's real easy to get pulled in different directions because of the ego and the ego gets excited when, Oh, I get to work with this famous person or I get to have all of this attention on this project I did or the show that I'm doing. It's really easy for the ego to kind of like start steering you around. Whereas if you've defined something like, well,
What does it mean to be successful to you? You know, and that's different for every person. You know, one person might be like, well, I don't ever want to work a nine to five job again. Another person might be, well, I want to live in a mansion. Another person might be, well, I want to, you know, have the freedom and autonomy to live life on my own terms as much as possible. But if you don't know what that is for you, what that success looks like for you, then you're going to be steered around by, in some cases, people that are much craftier than you, who are. entrenched in the business of taking whatever it is that people like yourself create and turning that into, you know, big money and opportunity for themselves. So I think most artists tend to be a little bit naive. I'm speaking of myself, a little bit naive, a little bit, um, this mindset that people are like, really looking out for you and really want to help you. And that is true sometimes, but it's not true all the time. And there are people that can enter into your life that don't have good intentions, that say all the right things, that because you've protected, the part of yourself that is expressive and that is kind of childlike and joyful that's allowing you to create art that connects with other people. You also have to then become the protector of that part of yourself from people who come in and see opportunity and say, oh, well, I can lead this person into this or this situation and I can cash in on that. And that's happened to many, many, many people. Do you think? Well, there's I think there's an obvious difference. I'm not trying to be like, whatever here, but with social media, with television these days, YouTube, all these things, would you say as an artist, perhaps people who are coming up now younger people 18, 19, 20, who really love to create, would you recommend before they start engaging all on social media, maybe for them to decide for themselves what success means to them. And I would imagine that changes over time. Yeah, it's definitely changed for me over time. But you still have to have that as like some kind of guiding light in your decision making. The definition I have for success in my life now is, freedom and autonomy. When I was younger, it was a little bit more on the material side of things because I was still struggling financially with a lot of things and I figured if I could just break through, then that would allow me to stabilize things. And I think that's a natural thing to a certain extent because no one's going to be happy in poverty.
But yeah, it does change. It's still relatively the same idea in my mind, but it does change throughout life and circumstance and things shifting around and different phases of life and things like that, I would think. Well, would you say that with social media and all the stuff? I mean, we always had, I mean, since I was young, we always had TV, right?
And so I would imagine...
Even when we were younger, when you were 20 and 21, was that still a fat, like were you listening? How do you stay true to your definition of a success? If you have all these people telling you on TikTok and on Reels and on Shorts like, oh, you need this, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. Like, I guess it gets back to how do you stay centered? Like from our other principle we were talking about. Staying on task. That's stubbornness. And it You know, stubbornness has a negative connotation in most contexts when it's talked about, but it can also be a really good thing. And you have to find healthy ways to... utilize your stubborn nature. Everyone's got one and you have to find ways to just still get along with everyone and be enthused about life and lighthearted and then balance that with stubbornly sticking to the things that are important to you. For somebody who's 18, 19, 20 and they're embarking on their journey of they want to be a full -time artist, painting, sculpting, how would you suggest they term it like, this is what I'm gonna do for the next five years, this is my definition of success, is there like different levels, short term, long term?
This is challenging. There's multiple principles in the book that go way beyond just like an advice for artists from other artists kind of thing. It's bigger stuff. And I think that's maybe where you're getting into with this is...
Well, what I'm thinking about is if I'm 18 or 19, 20.
You know, you do have to think about a long -term game, right? Cause it's a long game. It's not a sprint, but at the same time it's like, okay, so maybe I'm an artist and I'm in, um, in the Midwest and I'm going to do my thing here for five years and then decide to switch, switch it up. And you know, would that be advisable or I guess it's each to, you know what I mean? You're opening up can of worms and I'll, I'll, I'll dive in. Um, it's really about independence. And If you don't recognize that early on, you're going to get dragged around by everybody else. And that's been my life's experience. That's been my observation and conversation with dozens and dozens of other people who've stuck it out and done it as well. It's the nature of society to make you conform. And if you don't maintain your independence and your independence of thinking and your independence of motivations and definitions of things like success, then... you've got no chance at becoming truly expressive because you have to be.
You have to be what society deems as crazy.
Society wants you to go through the school system and then go into the corporate system and buy the big house and the fancy car and put your kids through the school system so they can go into the corporate system and they can buy the big house and fancy car. Anything that's outside of that, you are crazy. You are... And... So that's when it's, when I'm saying define your success and not have it be about finding until gain. That's what I'm talking about is. There's a whole system that's in place that is all about telling you this is what success looks like. And it is the same formula that is being fed to everyone. And the suburbs of America are full of this. And it's that stay in your lane, get this kind of job, rack up credit card debt and just stay on the treadmill. And hopefully when you are older and worn out and out of energy and out of enthusiasm and everything's been extracted from you, then hopefully you can cash in your retirement and you can go live the life you've really wanted to live all this time. And it's not true and it doesn't work out, but that's That's what everyone's being told to do. And so if you allow that definition to define what success is for you, then you don't even start trying to pursue the path of an artist. You mean the definition we're being fed. The definition we're being fed, but also once you, once you start entering into the arena of like, I am creating artwork, I'm sharing it with the world and I'm, looking for ways to support myself so that I don't have to have that definition, then there's a whole other set of things you have to confront related to that definition of success because that's a whole mechanism.
The gallery system's a great example of that. If you sit down and you start breaking down the numbers that, okay, here's a, let's say a $10 ,000 painting, which most entry -level artists and even established artists would be thrilled to get $10 ,000 painting. Well, most galleries are going to take 50 to 60, up to 70 % of that, some even 80 if they're really high level gallery. So now let's say you're keeping $4,000 of that painting and they're taking six.
If you sold a painting a month at $10 ,000 a painting, most artists starting out would be like, wow, that's amazing. I can't believe I'm getting $10 ,000 for my work. Well, you're not. And now you're having to support yourself on $48 ,000 a year after the gallery has taken its commission. But that's not $48,000 a year that you're living on, because you're operating a business. So you have to have the expenses of your studio, your supplies, your canvas, your, your marketing stuff, your traveling to shows, you're doing whatever. And now all of a sudden you're maybe making 25, $30,000 to live on. So you have to recognize this whole idea of defining your success.
Because if it's defined in, first of all, the mainstream, stay in your lane, do everything we say to do and become part of the corporate machine, then you're never going to pursue art in the first place. And then once you've determined that, yes, I'm going to make it work and I'm going to use the framework that's in place, that framework has its own, that it's created. And that's for you to… work and refine your work to a level that galleries can tap into it and they can tell your backstory and market you and they can sell to their clientele, but you're still living at a poverty wage. So it's the success thing. And that's why I say independence is what my life's experience has taught me is the most valuable thing as an artist and as a human being is stay independent. And so I would imagine asking that question. So for somebody out there, they're, they're going to do a gallery show or something. Ask how, how will this support my independence? How will this move me more towards independence? Yeah. Always asking that question. Right. And I, and I want to be clear on that too. That's not to say there may, you may be really shrewd and crafty and figure out how to utilize going through the gallery path and making that your independence. And if you can figure that out, then more power to you, applause. But just recognize what you're dealing with.
So define your own success.
Never measure the level of your success as an artist by financial gain. Define what success means to you and let that be your guide. So I think that was great. You know what you just said about the galleries and, um, and really also defining your success is knowing yourself too. Yeah. And.
We live in this world that has probably always been this way, but you have to support yourself and you have to live your life and pay your bills and all of that. I don't even think it's necessarily looking for like, well, how can I take what I do and turn that into a living? That's part of that whole like, hustle culture thing that I think was a mistake too. It may be that it's just adjusting what your viewpoint of success. So in the context of independence, it may be that living in a simple place and working in a coffee shop and just using that to cover your bills gives you the free head space and the freedom of time to work on your artwork and maybe your artwork never supports you financially. And that's okay. It's just don't let anything corrupt the artwork, including other people's definition of success so that that's where all the compromise is gonna start coming in. Where if you're defining your success on, you know, having this show and this gallery or this... you know, amount of sales of your record or whatever it is, then you're going to make compromises most likely to get that.
And if you start compromising that, then you might as well just pack it in.
The Artist Tao.