🙄 I am NOT an artist

#58 or how to stop lying to yourself (and beat that imposter syndrome)

Dear little demon,  

Welcome to the edition #58 of The Art Missive. We are now 11,955 😈 in this newsletter! Whether you've been here from the start or just arrived, thank you so much for reading ❤.

This week, I tried to prime my canvases with gesso for the first time, but it went wrong, so I started sketching on brand new canvas.

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If you haven't already, you can also:

• Read all the previous Art Missives

• Ask your questions for the next QaAs here

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In this Missive: 

1/ Intro.

2/ The smart kid.

3/ Self-lies. 

4/ Embody!

5/ Conclusion: explode.

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1/ Intro.

It's Tuesday morning, and I'm lying on my new physical therapist's table as he massages my injured left leg.

"What do you do for a living?" my therapist asks me with a charming smile.

"I'm a business owner" I reply automatically.

"Business of what?"

"Actually, I draw and paint portraits, and people buy my artwork or my courses. I also have sponsors to support my content and my community of over 350,000 followers."

"So, you're an artist? " he concludes.

"Oh, yes... that's right."

This mundane conversation was a shock to me. Why am I always afraid to say I'm an artist? 

It's been over 4 years since I started drawing and over 14 months that art is at the center of my life, yet I still reject the idea that I am one of them. 

Now, if you know me, you know I love problems to solve. And each week in our missives, I try to tackle at least one of them. This time, my physical therapist had handed me the problem to solve for the week on a silver platter.

Welcome to edition #58 of the Art Missive, a week where I overcome my impostor syndrome.

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2/ The smart kid.   

Little me with my grandmother

"Mom, how would you describe me?" The next day, I asked my mom who was eating dinner with me.

"Again with your strange questions..." She looked at me with a sigh. 

"Well, I'd say you've always been exceptionally smart. You had advanced reasoning skills from a young age, and you've always had a taste for risk, competition, and thrills. You would have made an excellent lawyer. It surprised me when you became an artist. You’re the smart kid… I always thought it would be your older brother who would make that choice."

I realized I was the complete opposite of my mentor, Vladislav Yashin, for whom being an artist had been a certainty since he was 14. For me, it seemed I had never identified as an artist.

With a personality like mine, focused on strategy, optimization, and discipline, you can immediately see how becoming an artist completely disrupted my system.

In art, you can forget all the concepts that shaped my personality:

Efficiency becomes insignificant in the face of experimentation.

Strategy fades before practice.

Thinking? I can still hear my mentor telling me "stop overthinking and get to work."

In short, I'm the perfect counter-example of the perfect artist.

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3/ Self-lies. 

In April, when I was spending my days in my mentor's studio, we would sometimes have personal discussions. One day, while talking about my art business and social media over coffee, he looked me straight in the eye with his soft and kind voice and said:

"You know Léa, what you do now is going to make you a great entrepreneur but a disappointing artist. In the morning I see you enter this studio with a business owner mindset. But as the session progresses and as you paint, I see you gradually stepping into your artist persona. So remember, you're not a content creator anymore. You're not a business owner anymore. You are an artist now. This is your identity for the rest of your life so you better start thinking like one."

It wasn't until today that I finally understood what he meant.

I realized that my "I'm not an artist" or "I'm not good enough to be an artist" attitude didn't just affect my mindset and productivity. It also led me to make poor decisions like procrastinating on starting new paintings and prioritizing content creation or sales over actual art creation.

It's like I had locked myself into this self-lie: when I look back on my life, I've always had a connection with drawing. Yet, I decided not to make art my identity because it was too scary. 

It's Thursday, 2 p.m., in my studio, and I spent the morning priming my canvases. Now, I find myself not only contemplating the drying gesso... but also my whole life. I decided it was time to let myself become an artist.

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4/ Embody! 

I found an inspiring speech by Will Smith explaining how he became successful. The main idea was that to achieve your goals, you need to start embodying them. In other words, to become the best actor in the world, he started thinking, talking, and acting like he was already the greatest actor. He became his objective in order to achieve his goal.

I found this super inspiring because it demonstrates the power of our identity on our actions. “I am this, so I act like this”. If I see myself as an artist, I will make decisions that align with my identity. It's almost magical! 

Imagine… I am here, sitting in my studio, full of doubt and anxiety. But if I call in Léa the artist, she enters my body-mind, and without conscious effort, things start to move. 

My back straightens. 

My gaze falls on my art supplies. 

I involuntarily take a big juicy breath: instinctively, I want to create. 

And as I look around, the world is different from what I saw but a minute ago. 

The colors get richer. 

Everything starts to inspire me. 

My work feels more like a precious gift rather than something I have to do to make money and achieve success. 

And from this place, I can examine questions or decisions that twenty-six Léa is struggling to resolve. 

“Just create”, the artist says. 

“Sit down. Turn off your phone. Turn off your brain. And just draw.” She's wise and kind. 

“Don't think about making it perfect,” she instructs. 

That's what it feels like, as soon as we let go of the imposter syndrome we often attach ourselves to. When we accept to identify with what we want to become, our world changes. And so do our actions. 

So, to build traction from this virtuous mindset, I've decided to implement habits that will help me embody my artist identity in the long run:

• Make art my default setting. Replace all my social media breaks with artistic breaks. For example, I've set up an automation on my phone that redirects me to Patreon every time I open YouTube.
  

• Set up a dedicated time. Dedicate the first 5 hours of my day to making art. From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., I'm not allowed to do anything else but create. No phone, no email, no Instagram…
  

• Constantly learn. Consume a weekly resource about art and painting. It could be a course, a book, or a conference…
  

• Say it out loud to make it even more true. Remind my surroundings that I am an artist. Additionally, prepare an elevator pitch that presents me as an artist and memorize it to encourage myself to introduce myself as an artist whenever I have the opportunity.

We are the sum of our daily actions. By surrounding myself with art, it becomes easier for me to think of myself as an artist and act like an artist.

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5/ Conclusion: explode. 

Sometimes, it's challenging to let go of the image we've constructed of ourselves. Categorizations provide reassurance; they make us feel more stable and protected. 

We prefer to tell ourselves that we won't talk to our crush because we're introverted, rather than admitting that we're actually afraid of rejection. 

We convince ourselves that we'd rather not share our work with others when, in reality, we just feel too vulnerable. 

We say, "this or that is just not for me" because it intimidates us and we fear failing. 

But what happens when we realize that there's no fate, and we're the only ones to decide who we can become?

Will Smith said, "I truly believe that I could be the President if I wanted to. Foolish me honestly believe this." 

So what if we stopped being afraid to realize the obvious: we can be whoever we want to be? 

Then, all our expectations crumble. 

We shatter the glass ceilings we've created for ourselves or that our surroundings have imposed on us. 

Suddenly, everything becomes possible. 

And frankly, it feels good.

Voilà, that's all from me, see you next week! 😈

Léa

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