I hold a BA in Studio Arts, with a focus on painting and lithography. After graduation, I chose not to go into arts as a career. This decision is partly due to imposter syndrome and my love of the culinary arts. In my early twenties, I found that there was something intoxicating about the dance of line cooking; the hard, long hours I shared with a group of diverse, interesting people; and the late-night schedule, which felt natural to me at that time in my life. Besides, I could always paint.
Fast forward 15 years, and here I am, still an artist at heart, although I’ve hesitated to label myself that. As I’ve grown older, I’ve removed myself from the demands of culinary life. Too many late nights, too few holidays with my family, and an unhealthy lifestyle finally did me in. Along the way, I’ve gotten some solid business training by virtue of two companies I built. The first was a dining service for a retirement community, and currently a packaged food brand.
Cooking and food satisfied some level of creativity for me, but the tangibility of interacting with paint and ink to delight people is a different experience than designing menus. The need to express abstractly through color and form into something more permanent remains constant within me.
Time to build a new business. Now I find myself wading through this new field, a burgeoning professional artist. But am I truly 15 years behind my colleagues from the university? Having done nothing in the public eye for my arts career doesn’t mean I haven’t been making work the whole time. I have entered the odd competition here and there, but making this a more permanent activity in my life has shown me the opportunities I could have taken years ago.
Do art and business exist at odds with one another? I consider the word “artist” and what we believe it means. I’ve struggled to identify myself using this word because until now I hadn’t defined it within me. I believe artists are all around us, creating compositions of words, sounds, images, and yes, menus - all sorts of different productions. Isn’t business one of these creations, too?
Necessarily, my arts career is a construct of all of my training in both fields until this moment. I am no longer afraid that I “won’t make it” because I believe in the universality of the word “artist”. My biggest concern now comes from an intuitive sense at a deep level within myself that my time is limited. This is distinct from an intellectual understanding of mortality.
That concern is that I won’t do all that I can creatively in this lifetime. Fortunately, this fear is easily conquered. I know that the only way to overcome that fear is to start right now. I share with all artists, including people creating outside of traditional definitions of art, the process of building legacies; however small, however large.