All artists know the agony, which is, primarily, doubt. Doubt that you’re onto something, or that anyone will care about that something. Doubt that the work will sell. Doubt that you can keep ideating, keep your wits about you, keep on keeping on.
But then there’s the ecstasy: playing with color, messing around with concepts and symbols, then throwing everything into the air and catching it as it falls onto your blank sheet. Ah, but then the doubt again: will it be dated by year’s end? Have you appropriated a symbol inappropriate for a white artist? Inappropriation. But then if one never transgresses, one never knows what the boundaries were, and whether there’s a better way through them, a more considered way through them. The thought that your symbols might be too on the nose, too obvious, just too whatever.
But that’s when your commitment comes into play. (Always about play, aren’t you?) Your commitment to experimenting, to go fearlessly into your own imagination, your own thicket of cultural assumptions, your own bag of tricks, your own unique bag of tricks… your commitment to self-trust.
And that’s where the ecstasy arrives again, when you fly through the fog and see below you terra incognito. That is all yours, even with all the borrowed concepts and language that creates them, that private world of yours come to light….