Comparing your art to other artists pulls you away from the real point, which is becoming more fully yourself. A story about a joyful rabbi named Zusha shows why, and why getting in motion, experimenting, and playing is how you find the art that’s already in you.
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What No One Will Ever Ask You About Your Art
Do you ever catch yourself comparing your art to what other artists are doing?
A Story I Never Forgot
There’s a story I heard years ago and never forgot. It’s about a rabbi named Zusha, who lived, so the story goes, somewhere between 100 and 300 years ago. He had nothing. He lived off the kindness of others, going from village to village, and people gave him food. He was also one of the most joyful people, and he gathered thousands and thousands of followers.
On his deathbed, the people who loved him found him crying. They asked him, “Why are you crying? You’re as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham.” And he said, “I’m crying because no one’s going to ask me when I’m no longer here why I wasn’t more like Moses. They’re going to ask me why I wasn’t more like Zusha.”
Why This Changes How I Think About Making Art
I share this story because I think it helps recalibrate why you make art. We compare ourselves and look at everything other people are doing, when the whole point is how we can be more ourselves. Zusha wasn’t going to be judged on whether he was Moses. We’re judged on whether we did the work we were here to do, the work of becoming ourselves.
No one is ever going to ask you whether you were more like Picasso. We look at his work, or the work of any famous artist, but becoming that isn’t the point. The point is to become more fully ourselves.
Your Art Is Already in You
I believe we’re each here to discover a reason and a purpose, and I feel it’s the same way with art. Our art is already preloaded in us, all of it, and we can’t know the 50th piece without doing the 30th piece. We don’t get to know ahead of time. We can’t figure it out. We can only begin, and create the conditions for it to unfold.
The way we find out is by getting in motion, by experimenting, by playing. That’s why asking “What’s my style?” and trying to figure out where your work is going doesn’t get you far. It’s already known. Your intuition and your soul already know it, and you can hear it when you make art without planning or trying. It starts to come up, and you recognize things. When you look at a piece and think, “Oh, I love this,” that’s the clue. Those are the breadcrumbs.
This story, especially, calmed me a lot. We’re never going to be the Picassos, and we don’t need to be.
Also This Week
Come Paint With Me at BLOOM WEEK
The way we find out who we are as artists is by getting in motion, by experimenting, by playing. That’s the whole point of BLOOM WEEK, coming up October 26 to 28.
It’s a three-day online event, an hour a day, and it’s made of painting. Those pieces where you stop and think, “Oh, I love this” are the breadcrumbs, and BLOOM WEEK is where we go looking for them together.
I’ll show you how to make art that’s truly yours. If you’ve never joined us before, I think you’ll love it.
Living Our Grandparents’ Dreams
Nadine Prada, artist and member of the Art2Life Creative Team, shared something this week that I thought was so beautiful I wanted to pass it along.
She’s been reading Summerland by Helen Humphreys, a book about how the dreams of our grandparents pass down to us, and we get to live them. Through a strange series of synchronicities, Nadine met Helen at a café the week before Helen gave a talk at a popular writers’ festival in Nadine’s town, and the two of them connected over that very idea.
Helen’s grandfather wanted to be a writer and never got the chance, and she’s a best-selling author. Nadine’s grandmother wanted to be an artist and never had the opportunity. Nadine has been using the texture of her grandmother’s lace doilies in her art, and she realized it’s a kind of posthumous collaboration.
In her words, “Maybe she gets to be an artist now, through me, after all.” Watch Nadine’s reel to see how her grandmother’s work shows up in her art.
Leave a comment and let me know what you’re working on right now.
Hi! I’m
Nicholas Wilton
the founder of Art2Life.
With over 20 years experience as a working artist and educator, I’ve developed a systematic approach that brings authenticity, spontaneity and joy back into the creative process.
Join me and artists from all over the world on our Art2Life Instagram account or learn more here about Art2Life.
