20 People 20 Stories of Rejection 20 Pieces of Artwork (Sculpture Video Paint)

I know success, I have met her.  But I know rejection more deeply.  He is a bitch of a hurdle that as an artist and a creative I have leapt over again and again and again.  First leaping blindly, driven by my youthful passion to create.  It allowed me to follow my bliss and remain unaware of the emotional bruising and the physical hunger of validation.  As time passed, and age and rejection amassed, I leapt more warily, feeling more deeply that pain.  I was rejected for shows and by galleries for reasons often not told and usually maddening; my work was not provocative enough, to bucolic not edgy, I didn’t know the right people or I was not good enough at selling myself.  I trusted.  And I trusted the wrong people — art reps who sold work and never paid me or never returned work they didn’t sell. 

Then my dog, who was like a son to me, died after a 14 month battle with cancer. 

I felt beaten.  I felt bitter.  I felt angry and used.  I felt frustration and disgust with the art world, the system, the politics and the B.S.   And I stopped.  I stopped trying to dance like the little monkey leashed to the organ grinder. 

I had spent years attempting to answer the biggest question most asked to an artist “what were you thinking about when you created that piece?”  

In my stopping, I found it.  My untold answer: I create beautiful things because I DON’T feel beautiful inside.  I create to disappear the rejection.  I create because when I am not creating, ALL that I am NOT is raging before me.  I create beautiful things in an attempt to balance those things that are not.

Rejection was my muse.  Now you know. 

So, I ask:

When was the last time you were rejected?  Do you remember?  I remember.  I understand.  Share your story with me.

Your rejection is what I want to think about when I create my next work...your rejection is what I want as my muse.

art@tsmcfadden.com