Till Death, We Do Art
The framework for creating timeless work.
More often than we are willing to admit, at the beginning of every new project we undertake as creatives and artists, we hope to outdo our previous achievements. Yet, regardless of our experience and expertise, we stare at a blank canvas, a piece of paper, often unsure of where to begin. We have a sense of the destination, but we’re unsure about the route to take, and we consciously fight the temptation of going along with what’s familiar because familiarity often feels like the very thing we are trying to escape.
This feeling has many faces and occurs in many cases, but regardless of how it manifests, it is simultaneously as important as it is irrelevant.
The Desire For Better
Any decent creator wants to make something “better”, but they often forget a more important question hidden inside that desire: What determines “better”?
Is it the euphoria of the audience? The quality of the process that produces the work? The technical sophistication of the final product? Or perhaps the clarity with which the work expresses something within the artist?
Think of creating art as having sex, a rather crude abstraction—but a useful one. The joy isn’t the orgasm as novices would rather imagine, but the entire escapade needs to feed into each other. Finding your inspiration and sources, connecting seemingly scattered parts, switching parts and pieces until they feel honest to you, the creator.
Again, just as sex—the best sex isn’t always those plotted for the performance, or done to impress. Yes, they can be amazing and fuel the ego in ways that feel intoxicating. But this creates a problem: it is often difficult to replicate consistently, especially when the conditions that made the performance aren’t entirely yours.
The best sex is honest sex, honest to the moment, wherein passion is poured out completely. You, the artist, seek to create what feels honest to yourself while consciously attempting to reach new levels of expression.
Better starts with honesty, the desire to create what you feel. This honesty then finds its expression firstly with the familiar—processes and patterns that help fan the flames of your creativity; better still: foreplay. At the crux of this heightened expression, you begin to push your own limits, experimenting with ways to express yourself. The climax at this point is the crowning effect of an already satisfying experience.
Better begins with honesty. But honesty alone is not enough.
Honesty Isn’t Enough
Again, any decent artist is honest enough about their work, to themselves at least. However, this is the baseline, not the bar that separates good from great or even great from timeless. Honesty allows you to create a space where others can connect with your art, but beyond it, there needs to be interesting items that make the distinction between yourself and every other human; and that is—ego.
You’ve heard: “Ego is the enemy” (popularised by the New York best-selling author, Ryan Holiday). However, ego isn’t always the enemy; it is often your best ally. Ego is used synonymously with pride and a false sense of self, but truly, Ego is your conscious sense of self, a part of your identity, and how you value your own importance.
It shouldn’t be confused with personality, as that is a narrow expression of ego, though it is equally important; it doesn’t directly affect how your work is made (though it can influence how it is perceived).
Every outstanding artist or creative in any era, regardless of their discipline, is an individual honest about their ego and confident enough to let it reflect in their creativity. The ego is a signature on paper; it is the origin of style, and style is what makes your work recognisable regardless of where or when it is seen.
Building The Ego
Creatives in their nascent stages create alter-egos of themselves. Versions of themselves they express to the world either through their craft or personality. And this is often a good step as it allows you to experiment with multiple identities that could, in turn, become your full expression. However, you must be willing to consolidate these expressions into a singular identity—A bold step many never dare to undertake either because they fail to recognise the potential it offers or they don’t know how.
The most common place to build the ego is to start with observation. Observing characters both real and fictional that express values that you have or are willing to adopt.
It is not enough to find figures you admire; the most important aspect is identifying their narrative and how they imprint their identity into the narrative they are creating. Because the world moves less on what’s inherently real but what it perceives to be real.
Therefore, to find your own narrative, there are four (4) questions necessary to be answered
1. What do you want as a consequence of people experiencing your work?
Be specific. What is your selfish desire? What do you want people to feel, think, do, remember, or believe after encountering what you create?
This is your first opportunity to be completely honest.
2. What would you need to be known for for that to happen?
This is reputation by representation.
What must people associate with your name for your desired consequence to become possible?
This is where personality becomes important. Representation shapes reputation, and reputation often precedes us and creates opportunities in places we can only imagine.
3. What would you need to do to become known for that?
This is where identity becomes practice.
You cannot simply decide what you want to represent. You must repeatedly behave in ways that make that representation believable.
4. What would you need to learn to accomplish the first three?
This is where aspiration becomes discipline.
The distance between the person you are and the artist you want to become is often made up of skills, knowledge, experiences, and perspectives you have yet to acquire.
If you cannot answer these questions yourself, borrow a mirror.
Study the characters you admire. Study artists whose work moves you. Study people whose identities seem fully formed. Then ask yourself how you perceive them, what they consistently communicate, and why their work feels unmistakably theirs.
Your answers do not have to become their answers.
They only need to help you discover yours.
Till Death, We Do Art
Perhaps it matters little whether you consider yourself a creative or not.
Your life is an expression of art in itself.
Every decision, relationship, conversation, room you enter, object you create, and person you influence contributes to the composition of a life that only you can produce.
How you treat people becomes an expression of your art.
How you solve problems becomes an expression of your art.
How you dress, speak, love, build, destroy, teach, and remember becomes an expression of your art.
And the impact you leave in the hearts and minds of others becomes the legacy of that expression.
So allow yourself to be honest. First with yourself.
Then let that honesty guide you through the uncomfortable and sometimes contradictory elements of your identity. Explore them. Question them. Refine them. Build upon them, because the goal is not simply to make something better than what you made yesterday.
The goal is to become someone whose expression could not have come from anyone else.
And perhaps that is the real responsibility of the artist: not merely to produce something excellent, but to allow the full magnitude of their particular magic to become visible.
We spend our lives creating: creating objects, creating ideas, creating relationships, creating memories, creating meaning.
Whether we recognise it or not, we are always making something.
And until death—we do art.