The Obstacle Is the Path
- Lucy
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
According to Google, this famous concept originates from the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. It teaches that obstacles are not barriers to success, but rather the path itself. Challenges should be embraced as opportunities to learn, adapt, and grow stronger.
Easier said than done.
Lately I've been feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the BFRs (Big F-ing Rocks) I see in my artistic path with the goal of getting my artwork seen by the public and selling my work to people who will enjoy it. These rocks include being a woman in general, being a menopausal woman (gasp!), living in a rural area, personal digestion and nervous system limitations, my art education, and my type of artwork.
If your counting, that's more than 3 "strikes" so in baseball I'd be called OUT!
Dear reader, do you think I'm crazy?
Well, read on.
For centuries, social conventions limited the training available to women artists, the subjects they could render, and the ways they could market their work. Books have been written on these topics and if you are interested I'm happy to recommend a few. In any event, those historical issues are still at play today. Check out these statistics from the National Museum of Women in the Arts:
A recent survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent U.S. art museums found that the represented artists are 87% male and 85% white.
The NEA found that as women artists age, they earn progressively less than their male artist counterparts. Women artists aged 55–64 earn only 66¢ for each $1 earned by men.
Only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women.
Living in a rural area doesn't help either. The art world, like the world at large, is built on relationships. And even with all the technological ways we have of staying in touch, face to face interactions are still the gold standard. Spending time together, facing challenges together, getting to know one another, all contribute to building a history and a relationship. Think of your own life, do you go out of your way to meet strangers? Or do you spend your time with people with whom you have established relationships ?
Living in Las Vegas, NM (an hour from the art mecca Santa Fe and 2 hours from the largest city in the state, Albuquerque) it's hard for me to spend quality face to face time with key art influencers like gallery owners, museum curators, art collectors who generally live in larger, more affluent communities. When I have opportunities to interact with them, I find them to be lovely people who deeply care about art and I regret living so far away.
Whereas some people find an hour drive to be no big deal, my body disagrees. In my 50s I've discovered that I have to follow a very precise diet or I get sick. If I go anywhere now, I take my own food and eat "picnic style". When it comes to meeting people, they often want to eat or have a drink as we talk but that doesn't work for me. I've found a couple of restaurants in Santa Fe where I can eat, but they are not where key influencers generally want to eat. Whereas I don't mind joining them while they eat at their favorite restaurant, but I've found that not eating or drinking alcohol with someone generally makes people feel uncomfortable.
My nervous system also has specific requirements. I need quiet and periods of calm or nature breaks during the day or I get very edgy and agitated. At the end of a busy day I need several hours to process the day's events and relax before I can fall asleep. Unfortunately, driving an hour or more can leave my body feeling jostled and uneasy, so a trip to Santa Fe is something I plan carefully for both food and getting home early enough to unwind before bed. All of this adds up to mean that evening art openings, lectures, cultural events, meetings over drinks, are all off the table. Or, if I do go, I know I will be a wreck for days afterwards which I find to be a high price to pay.
In the art world there seem to be 2 main camps - one for people who appreciate artists with academic art degrees and one for people who prefer self-taught artists. I fall in between. I've had some formal art education as an undergrad. I started studying art but after spending a semester in England and traveling Europe and being awakened to how differently other societies govern themseleves, I changed my degree to a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. In my 40s, I had a couple of years studying art in an atelier but I do not have an advanced art degree. So I have some art education but not a fully bonafide art education. Additionally, this means I am not qualified to teach at schools. But I have enough education that I'm not perceived to be self taught so I'm not welcomed in either camp.
Add to the mix the fact that I am a Classical Realist working in soft pastel (two terms that most people, even art aficionados, have little understanding of) and both of those two things that are not in vogue at the moment and I have an almost non-existent market for selling my artwork.
According to José Art Academy, their research suggests that the most popular styles in art today are:
Digital art
Street art and graffiti
Minimalism
Abstract expressionism
Pop art
sigh
I'm not going to sugar coat it, that's a lot of BFRs and I almost titled this post "how an artist dies".
But yesterday a friend reminded me of the saying, "The obstacle is the way/path/solution". I know there is truth to this statement because I've experienced it in my life. When I was studying at the atelier and discovered I was highly allergic to oil paints and solvents and couldn't continue working in oil I struggled to see a way forward. Thankfully my teacher and mentor didn't give up and introduced me to many mediums until I found something that I loved - pastels.
So the oil paints were a BFR but in moving through that unwelcome reality, I found something I liked even better - pastels.
I am sure there is a path forward through all the current BFRs on my road but so far I am not seeing it. Part of that is because so much of my time and problem-solving creative space is being taken up with other responsibilities like being the Co-Chair of a New Mexico non-profit, the New Mexico State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. And because now that we have mostly finished building that barn (see earlier articles) we are now starting to build a house. We are doing the work ourselves and gratefully my husband has a lot of experience building houses (and lots of other things). However, having never worked on large-scale construction projects myself, I'm entering a whole new world with new vocabulary, new risks, and new skills to learn which is taking a lot of my focus and attention.
For now, I've decided to just spend what time and energy I have in the studio making my art. I'll let the future of my sharing and showing my art unfold in its own time and maybe along the way those BFRs will get smaller or shift in some way and I'll see a path forward.
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