Experiencing and dealing with rejection

Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable

The theme of rejection is one of the most common in an artist’s life - coming from a teacher, relative, stranger or client - we all experience rejection from time to time, it is part of the deal. It can be painful and can have profound effects on us, especially because we as artists put so much of ourselves into our work and are very personal about how it is received by others.

Recently I listened to an interview with an artist who said that the only thing she was good at school was art, so it was the only thing she knew she could pursue as a career. And this is a recurring theme in many artist interviews.

When I was in school I was actually quite good at most subjects, BUT art, while art was definitely something that called me from a very early age and was (and is) one of my absolute favourite things. Well, I did get good marks in art, but I definitely felt not being original or anything special in comparison to others. That is why it was so hard to deal with rejection - I felt that all criticism is justified and I am just not good at art.

I had two memorable experiences with my art teachers in school. The first teacher gave us a task of drawing a decorative piece of tableware. I remembered seeing some sort of funny porcelain teapot with four spouts in a local museum and I created a piece inspired by it. He told me that it was impractical and I think I even got a C. And yes, the task was to create a decorative piece of tableware, not a practical one. Some years later the second teacher gave us an assignment to create a painting inspired by the seasons of the year. I decided to be creative and painted a tree in all 4 seasons - I split the page into four parts and painted one part of the tree covered with snow, the other with spring flowers and so on. She told me that it was a stupid idea. No comments here. Needles to say that these (and some more) experiences had a big impact on me and on my decision to not pursue art after school. Well, the first teacher was an alcoholic and obviously unhappy. He was a classically trained artist, but didn’t achieve success and landed in a school as an elementary art teacher. He had his favourites, but disliked works that didn’t fit into a certain box I suppose. The second teacher liked pretty things. She disliked my messiness (I am quite messy, it’s who I am). She disliked that my assignments were made with cheap supplies. She liked giving A’s to those who created pretty and neat pictures and had fancier supplies. Some of my classmates were really very talented and I don’t think there was ever something personal in the decisions of my teachers, however, there were no objective criteria either. The above mentioned pieces with other works are still somewhere in my parents’ apartment. It took me more than 10 years to muster up the courage for coming back to regularly making art.

I did buy supplies from time to time and made some art during these years, but it never transformed into a regular practice until 5 years ago. My first step was joining an oil painting workshop (one of those where you repeat after the teacher) and painting the Notre Dame cathedral. The instructor was a very young, fresh from the university, classically trained artist, who expected that all her students would easily and quickly repeat after her. She was a little nervous that I wasn’t able to understand everything instantly and that not all my lines were straight enough. She even took my paintbrush on several occasions and did the strokes for me to speed up the process. Also, I was the only one who signed up for this workshop. Which is probably good, because I didn’t have to feel ashamed comparing myself to others, but on the flip side the teacher didn’t give me breathing space to process the instructions. After all it was the first time I tried working with oils. All in all it was quite an awkward experience.

But you know what? This time I didn’t turn away from my art. I bought my own supplies and started practicing and learning by myself. So little by little I started developing my own skills and my own style. The past several years have been a major breakthrough for me in terms of mindset, accepting myself as an artist, permitting myself to play and valuing process over the result. Now I am much more chill about creating bad work and trying things that are out of my comfort zone. It also means that I am more comfortable dealing with rejection, because now I have a much more nuanced understanding of how humans perceive and evaluate artwork.

It was difficult to confront childhood memories, but at the same time I feel that I forgave those teachers long ago. I’ve been teaching at a university (not art-related) for almost 7 years and “the other side” - being a teacher and evaluating the work of others - has its own difficulties. With age I gained more confidence in myself as a person and also I gained experience with dealing with rejection in many spheres of life. I just became more comfortable with being uncomfortable. (Is it called being an adult?) That is why the not really pleasant experience during the oil painting class didn’t affect me much.

Now I prefer to look into the future, not into the past.

Also I understood that the longer you are into the journey the better it is to let go of someone’s guidance and try to figure things out by yourself. When you learned the basics of colour, composition, value, etc., you have to start experimenting, looking into yourself and finding your own voice. You have to learn how to deal with rejection - overcome the fear of creating art that not everyone likes and understands. Art is very subjective and individual, so feedback even from a trained professional artist or a large corporate client isn’t 100% objective. Critique is useful only when not taken personally and with a grain of salt.

You and your art are connected, but not the same thing. One piece of bad art doesn’t make you a bad artist. Good work comes on top of all the bad work that you make. It is not infrequent for great artwork to come as a result of many failed attempts, but good work would not exist without all the previous experiments. As soon as you stop being precious about every sketch, study, or piece of art being perfect and finished then it starts being easier to let go.

It is through play and experiments that we learn the most. Permitting yourself to play and create something that isn’t precious is essential for artistic growth. - read more here:

Sketchbook Tour 3

You will still feel frustration from time to time because it takes time to acquire skills and gain confidence, but with time dealing with rejection will become easier.

I hope that sharing my experience in this post will cheer someone up. We all experience rejection, it is a normal part of, well, being a human, but we can learn how to deal with it and be gentler with ourselves!

You may be also interested:

Overcoming a creative block

Make your art practice accessible to you

How to stay inspired in your art practice

Thank you for being here!

Until next time!

Lisa