Mediocre Art Is Better than a Good Job

Since my favorite (and only) social media outlet, Post.News, is closing, I’ve decided to start using my blogs as a place to deposit my work. No one reads blogs, really, but it’s better than taking a part-time job to remedy my occasional boredom.

I restarted my love affair with art, in earnest, back in 2021, prompted by my wife’s encouragements. All of the many artistic friends I knew were much better than I was, so I never even considered taking art education, or gods forbid, a career in art. I was mediocre, but I could be great at other things. I took the road most traveled.

Now that I’ve retired, I can do what I want. The artists I knew, except for my wife, all ended up in art-adjacent careers, so I’m sure I made the right choice. If that talented lot couldn’t make it as fine artists, I’d never have had a chance. Sure, I could have taken the pro photography route, and my work stands up to that kind of scrutiny, but they don’t make the kind of money to have warranted the risks I’d had to endure. Not all of us are Annie Leibovitz, after all.

As I began working on my latest painting, I was looking for some resources for handling hair, and started looking at my sketches from 2021. The Pandemic’s lockdown brought out some interesting stuff, I reckon. I’m not sure I ever shared most of these with anyone but close friends, but I’m better than this now, so what the heck.