16
I think about how excited and terrified I was to reject suburban living; the security of a regular job to pursue my dream of being an artist. How difficult it was to scrape together the first month’s rent for the studio space from a back-breaking job in a Chinese kitchen.
Then I recall sitting on the pavement outside, head in hands, wondering what to do when I turned up to find a padlocked door and bailiffs looking for a landlord who had illegally sublet the building and disappeared with the rent money!
Who knew that when a college tutor picked up a piece of discarded wire mesh from a corridor floor and threw it to me, saying: “Do something with this”, I’d still be doing something with it 23 years later. That it would have sparked off a passion for an art form that has kept me focused through every difficult turn in my career.
The only way to succeed is to be obsessed. And how do we measure success anyway? It’s good to get paid for your work; to know that someone likes it enough to part with some money.
And we all need to live. But there is another success that sends a feeling right through to your soul.
It comes with knowing your art, mastering your tools, getting those shapes just right. Like forming a foot, toes, cartilage, sinew and bone, and then being weirdly convinced that you can actually smell it. That is success. As Roald Dahl said, “The secret of success is to become very very good at something that’s very very hard to do”.
Well I’ve always loved a challenge, and I know that means putting in the hours, though sometimes to the detriment of everything else. It’s the same story for every artist that I meet: tremendous highs, crushing lows. The exhilaration of setting up an exhibition - so much work invested in every piece - and the sinking disappointment if nothing sells. Because it’s not just the artwork on show, it’s a bit of your soul as well, so rejection becomes very personal.
The Music Conductor by Michelle Castles
Cyclist by Michelle Castles