Who is on your cheerleader team?

Summer shadow blues

Acrylic on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(Remember I said I had an idea for what
to do with this one. This is it. I still
have to add some shadow to the figure,
but I like the combination of figurative
and abstract.)

Is this an idle question -- I don't think so. I hope the
first person on your team of supporters is you, because
without belief in what you do you can't keep going.
But how about your friends? In the art world
there are people who are supportive, detractors,
and those who just don't care. But this job requires
a lot of nerve. After all many people won't understand
either what you're creating, or why you're creating it.
Some fierce little person inside has to keep going
through snide remarks, lack of appreciation, and
outright put downs. But that person (you/me) also
has to learn to move away from the detractors, and
seek out a great cheering team. I don't mean that
you force people into a corner and say "hey -- tell me
I'm good!" I mean you seek out people who like what
you do, and who like you, and those friends,
acquaintances, and as the circle grows, total strangers,
are your positive back up.

Now Alyson Stanfield, who writes the artbizblog,
I can imagine might say there's another group. Those are
converts. The reason you can't rule out people who
outright dislike your work altogether is twofold.
Tastes change -- the tastes of your audience -- and you
change -- your work evolves and goes in different
directions. One day you'll be at a show
of your work, and see a former critic approaching
you beaming. Are you going to turn away because
that person didn't used to "get" your work. No.
You're going to beam back, and possibly have a
convert, even a collector now on your team.

A final idea. Don't let detractors stop you. Not if
you believe in yourself. I heard the other day about
a wonderful writer who didn't write for 20 years
because of a cruel remark. What a shame. Twenty
lost years. See what I mean? Take the cruel remark
to your closest supporters, and they'll help you
let it go and move on.

Have a cheering-on-the-people-you-believe-in day.
P.S. Thank you to my team of supporters. I rarely
hear any cruel remarks anymore. And if I do I
either weigh the remark's validity, or I discount it,
or I head right to my friends for a talk it, and drop
it discussion.