Lennon Bone says a real artist stops needing validation from galleries, critics, or algorithms. Your work is an extension of your values and stories. People buy from you because they see themselves in your authenticity, not your credentials.
This is the number one sign that you're a true artist, and this is so dirt simple, but you stop needing a gallery or a market to approve you. You stop needing an algorithm to tell you that your work matters. You just know that it does. And a lot of artists will come to me and they'll say, well, Lennon, I do believe that, but then they tell me, well, I'm afraid to show up online. Selling feels scary. I'm worried about what my friends and family are gonna say when they see this content that's me like showing up and you know, being myself. For some of you, this is going to really land. For others, it's going to go over your head and I apologize. But when I say you know that your work matters, what I really mean is you know that you matter because you are the work, you are the art. Everything you make is a byproduct of your values, your stories, your experiences. And the truth is, is when we have fear come up around selling or showing up, we're fearing how people are going to perceive us or that something may go wrong. And all of that is a byproduct of a broken system that has tricked you into believing that what they say is art is actually art. You know what matters? What your people say. What some freaking art critic on Instagram says are the top 3 things that make your art art does not matter if you're trying to sell it to someone else. It's how much they connect to it. What your college professor or whomever else created their own system in their brain, you have to understand these are all systems, this is all created for someone else's benefit. And if it was all just generated for someone else's benefit, why can't you just generate your own system for your own benefit and the benefit of your people? If you're doing it from love and respect and kindness and an opportunity to connect and share, what's wrong with that? And that's the stuff people pay for. Not because of how long it took you to make it, not because of where you went to school, but because they see you in it and they see themselves in it. All because you believed in your own value so much that you showed up from that place. I'm sending you tons of love.
