Taking Off the Mystique
There’s a mystique that exists around great artists. Whether it be a great musician, painter, author, etc, there’s an aura that exists around those people that makes them seem like they’re not the same as ‘us regular humans.’ Maybe this aura is created because we see their work, but we rarely see them. Maybe it’s because we usually see them in perfectly lit carefully crafted photos of themselves, or it could also be just a vibe the artists themselves portray. They work their hardest to make it look easy, but show little of the hard work it took to get there.
But when you get down to it, great art is a lot like anything else. It’s a process. When you first start out, you’re pretty bad; and then if you keep working at it, you get better. You can go as far as you want to go, and you can work as hard as you want to work. The difference between being great and being average is what you are willing to believe about yourself in your mind, and then the work you’re willing to do to get there.
Michelangelo, (painter of the Sistine Chapel) put it best when he said:
“If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all”.
-Michelangelo
The formula for being great is easy, but the work is really hard.