Every word of your post resonates in me. I live in a very anti-art (micro- and macro-)environment and for a long time have had the same kind of battle day after day after day. However, I haven’t been as strong as you are and given up my “official” artist’s dreams. It has some (very tiny) advantages (there are no smarty faces all the time who tell me what to do and how to do it in art, just like your experiences), but basically my weakness and my (bad?) compromises have made me sad and frustrated for the rest of my life. On the other hand I feel free now, heavy with sorrow but free.

Anyhow, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your post.

I had a great poster in my office- it depicted all these hurdles in design- each hurdle represented things like “brand manager approval”, “test group approval”, “the client loves it” etc… the last hurdle was knocked over and said something like “CFO’s wife says ‘I don’t get it’”

I love when people say “oh I always thought I should go in to art but I…” or “I was going to go in to art, but I…”. People that say this will never “get it”. They act like anyone can do this- its as if they could choose at any moment to be an artist. Every aspect of our lives has been about drawing, from childhood. I distinctly remember my father teaching me how to color and shade properly at the age of 4. Everything I own has some kind of doodle on it. When I have time to kill- I doodle the amount of minutes I have left… 55, 54, 53, 52… I’ve been doing that since junior high.

I’ve been so frustrated with everything you’ve mentioned above, that for the last 8 or so years, when people ask me what I do- I smirk and say “I color pictures” or “I make things pretty”.

This is an awesome entry. Thank you.