Make bad art (please!)
A small burlap canvas is painted with pastel flowers coming out of a pair of lungs. Superimposed on top are magazine cutout letters that read “MAKE BAD ART.”
This piece was a one-off project I painted in 2020 — when everyone in the world did random, one-off projects. Now the painting contains my north star, the idea of making “bad” art.
To me, it means creating without the pressure to perform (which also happened to be the theme of my 2024 vision board). In this hyper-performative world, where your every action can be surveilled and shared publicly, artists express trouble making creations that are just for them. Social media especially has put pressure on folks to make art that is meant for an audience — for clicks and re-shares rather than for personal fulfillment.
Beyond just making art, I sometimes feel like everything I do has to be a performance: my daily coffee, my journal entries, my quality time with friends and family.
Rather than fear the idea of people watching and judging my every move, I lean into it. Every heart, every comment sends me high. I’m constantly picking up and unlocking my phone. Pick up, to never put down. I’m frantic after every post, checking the reactions until they satisfy my need for external validation (they never do).
If that sounds obsessive, that’s because it is. My internet addiction has completely taken over and tainted the way I make art. This intimate relationship between me and my creativity has been fundamentally altered.
In a poem about internet addiction, I wrote:
my phone is an extension of my arm
and to separate myself from it
would be to mutilate myself.
So melodramatic. But it’s honest.
The back page of a zine about being a creative (it reads “Making bad art is a gift.”)
In divesting time away from screens, I seek comfort in creation.
Making bad art has been the cure to the deep shame I feel about my internet addiction. Being physically off screens, or on screens only for non-social media reasons, truly saves me. It gets me into a good creative mindset and trains my brain to accept the real world.
The back page of a zine about being a creative (it reads “Making bad art is a gift.”)
My plea to you, friend, is to make bad art. Write shitty poetry. Paint ugly paintings. Sing off-key songs.
It may just save you, too.
