Mind Your Practice

Artists' Three Basic Needs

Episode Summary

Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode, I’ll tell you what I think are the three basic needs for artists and why.

Episode Notes

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THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:

Ok, let’s talk about your homework. I want you to think about these three basic needs for artists in your own life. How is your practice? How about your creative community? How full are your coffers? Where can you identify that a little tending is needed and how can you invite in what you need? If you think one or more of these needs are found wanting, make a plan for the next week. What is one simple action you can take? How much time can you reasonably commit to tending to these three basic needs?

Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com

Episode Transcription

Ep. 3: Artists’ three basic needs

Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode, I’ll tell you what I think are the three basic needs for artists and why.

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Hello artists. I’ve been working as an arts consultant for a little over a decade. Years and years I’ve spent one-on-one with artists, listening to and focusing on your stories and questions. And I absolutely love it. A little rough calculating reveals that I’ve blown way past the 10,000 hours for mastery in a field but that’s just a myth debunked by psychologists and journalists. And that’s a different episode. Anyway, throughout this time, careful observation and deep listening have illuminated millions of information gems about artists: how you work, think, feel, process, and move through space and time. I mine and cull this collective data to share it back with you in the belief that it will make your lives and practices more of what you want.

To that end, I want to share with you what I’ve come to understand as the artists’ three basic needs. You, as a human, of course have many basic needs: housing, food, physical safety, emotional support, clean drinking water, and more. And artists have lots of needs but I mean the very baseline of what lays the groundwork for building a robust, fulfilling, sustainable and generative creative practice.

I’ve written about this in my first book, Your Art Will Save Your Life, if you want to reference that text.

Here we go:

You need to make your art. That’s right, couldn’t be simpler or more complicated! You need an ongoing creative practice, week after week, month after month, year after year. By committing to a practice, through its inevitable peaks and valleys, changes and transformations, you are committing to this part of yourself and communicating to the deepest corner of your being that you will not abandon yourself as an artist. When you make your work, you feel better. Maybe not necessarily during every work session, but I find that artists who have a regular practice report a decrease in their anxiety and depression. They feel more grounded and connected to themselves and others. It serves, among other things, as a vital way they care for themselves and process life.
You need a community of working artists who want good things for themselves and one another. Yes, you need other people. Other artist people. By working artist, I mean people who are leaning into the action of making art no matter their identity as an artist. It doesn’t mean they are or aren’t making money from their art. It doesn’t mean they don’t have day jobs. It means a community of people making art. And I tack on the piece about ‘wanting good things’ so what does that mean? I want your community to be filled and ever growing with artists who want success in any and every sense of the word for their own practices and for those of their friends. Again, this may or may not include money but it does mean cultivating communities that aren’t guided by competition and withholding but instead believe that when everyone does better, then everyone does better.
You need to fill your coffers. You need to take in information, stimulae, sights, sounds, textures, and sensory experiences. A lot of this should come from other art, in every discipline, including things you think you won’t like or understand. You need adventure and ideas and exchange and feelings, the cerebral and emotional cultivation that fills you back up to return to your creative work. Sometimes when you feel stuck in your work, you just need some new information coming in by way of other artists’ work. Seeking out and absorbing lots of art will help you solve the problems and move through inevitable stuckness in your own work.

These three basic needs - making art, cultivating creative community, refilling your coffers - may seem simplistic and reductive but over and over again, I find artists benefit from examining whether they have this foundational triad. Sometimes, an artist will discover one or more of the three are under-tended and need some attention. Maybe connecting to community gets neglected because of the pandemic. Or perhaps you haven’t looked outside your own work for answers and ideas. Maybe you’re taking in other artists’ work but avoiding yours.

Consider this moment as a gentle invitation to help you get grounded and find balance in these three basic needs.

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Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.

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Thanks for listening to Mind Your Practice and be sure to subscribe so you get all the bonus episodes coming your way. If you are an artist who likes to be told what to do, I am more than happy to boss you around through email and social media. You can find me on Instagram at @bethpickensconsulting and join my mailing list on my website bethpickens.com. Thanks for listening and keep making art.

Mind Your Practice is created by Beth Pickens and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.