Trying to find "your work"

One thing that has sort of haunted me living in such an overwhelming consuming media culture, being privileged with endless options, as well as having seen so much different styles of artwork, is that I always stress about trying to figure out what kind of art I want to do and what kind of art I want to give to people. I think that any art I do has to "match" or point towards something, maybe like me as a person or some crazy notion about my personal philosophies or to suggest something about the world itself but there is only so much intentionality that can be manifested consciously. This approach has made it rather difficult and frustrating at the thought of even attempting to make art. Or at least consistently or proficiently. Art isn't made strictly by worrying about commentary or theory, not even visual language or its appeal to other people, its made by being made to begin with. Finding "your work" is primarily making work to begin with but concurrently figuring out what is working and what isn't, what you like and what you don't.

Making work to begin with takes some sort of inspiration which everyone has some sort of (whether they know it or don't). Take children for example; things that interest them don't lose their attention. Naturally at a default state, he or she draws what they like, write what they like, sing what they like, and over time the accumulation of what is more intriguing, resonating, and meaningful is naturally what he or she will gravitate toward. Likewise, they don't get so frustrated with the execution since thats not really what they're so worried about. The problem though is that we are not children, we can understand there is a social pressures and connotations with making art, we are self-conscious, competitive, critical, which is a natural and healthy part of life but makes the creative process a lot more intimidating, heavy, and awkward than when we were just children. We wrestle with theoretical questions of what kind of art do I want to make? What do I want to convey? How can I imitate this? What kind of art do I like? Technical questions like can I even do this art? What colour should go here? What medium should I use?And introspective questions like what if I can't do it? what if no one cares? what if people think im a fraud? Is this a waste of time? And questions even beyond these ones.

We are in a continuously radical period of art history where art is sitting on boundaries that stretch as far as claiming there are none; cave paintings to conceptualism, mastery isn't all that impressive, museum politics and the canon of modernism is changing as well, from as radical as the white box was we now have instagram. This notion of a type or kind of "work" is definitely a reality within making art, we have different eras characterized by different styles, genres, and themes, but the notion of "your work" is elusive until "your work" is being made, and it can't be found unless you are making work. Worrying about the details of every little narrative, theme, conveyance, emotion, might work counterintuitively if it prevents you from working at all. The beauty of work is that all these thoughts and emotions come out naturally without hesitation but only during a flow of consistent process. Making work takes work. Mastery takes work. Even conceptualism takes some sort of work. Figuring out what kind of work also takes work. Nothing is accomplished, or discovered, or explored, or suggested unless lines are being put down on paper.

My advice is see more before you think. See what calms you, provokes you, excites you, disgusts you, pisses you off, makes you cry, makes you think, then after think why it does? how it does? At the very least it makes a viewer aware of what resonates in their soul and how they might recreate it in their own work. Inspiration is breathing in, but progress is breathing out production; no production, no imitation, no reflection, then that inspiration isn't inspiration, its just content.