poohbearjim asks:
What was the one event that made you say to yourself, “I really am a successful artist?”

The closest I could come was right before my last opening here in New York. I was showing at a gallery that for better or worse had become a serious, well thought of gallery in NYC. A gallery that I have worked with for 14 years. Although they have three exhibition spaces I was in the largest one. The work I was showing was work that I had wanted to make, that wasn’t predicated on selling, or on presenting a false image of who I was. The presence of so many good things amde me very nervous at first because I felt that it was really undeserved. But then I had the realization that this was a showing situation that I had thought of for many many years – since Highschool really, and that I had managed to do it. So that felt like real success.

Of course the feeling didn’t last, and after a short while I fell back into feeling like I’ve never really accomplished anything. Stuff in the studio makes me feel just as despairing these days as then, and my expressions of good cheer fell as brittle. But it seems that that comes with the territory.

March is question month, ask and I’ll answer in a post in the order in which I receive the questions.