“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
Keep going.
Effort itself – even if unrewarded, seemingly unsuccessful and in vain – is better than giving up. You have to give up hope and still keep doing what you’re doing. Because you just do; because that is what you do, that is who you are, and that is WHAT MAKES YOU who you are.
And if it seems like everyone knows something you don’t, like other people are luckier, more talented, have it made – forget it. I’ve spoken to some very famous painters in moments of candor, and I can assure you no one really knows what they’re doing – the best artists learn to live with doubt and to keep working in spite of it. They’ll be the first to tell you they’re just keeping going and doing what they have to do.
Take Katsushika Hokusai, known the world over for his famous wave painting (The Great Wave off Kanagawa). He revolutionized woodblock art-making during his career. Hokusai didn’t reach his peak until he was over 60, and evidently even then he felt just as much a poser as anyone else. On his deathbed, aged 88, he apparently told his disciples: “If only Heaven would give me just another ten years… then I could become a real painter.”
That ought to tell you something about artistic maturity! Here’s what another very successful painter has to say about just keeping going and doing what you have to do:
“One is usually bewildered by all the sensations of real life. And the impossibility and danger tempts us….
George Nick, Learjet I, 30 July, 2020, oil on linen, 26×36″
… So we struggle like headless chickens flouting madly about at anything to try to succeed. That drives us beyond our capabilities and thrills us if we even succeed a little. With dogged practice we bleed and grow….
Donald Demers, Jaune and Lavande, Provence, 24×36 – oil
…. We eventually live in a state of constant failure with little sparks of surprises that we do not control or understand and realize we are where we really want to be.” – George Nick
Onward and upward.
