Art making is often romanticised. We celebrate the finished exhibition, the sold painting, the award, the viral post, or the magazine feature. What we rarely talk about is everything that happens before any of those moments: the doubt, the rejection, the comparison, the silence, and the persistence required to keep creating when nobody seems to be watching.
For me, making art has never simply been a profession. It is a vocation. It is how I understand the world, process experience, and communicate with others. Yet living a creative life is as emotionally demanding as it is rewarding. Every artist, whether just starting out or established, develops a complicated relationship with their work over time. Mine is no different.
Making Work While Doubting Yourself
The North East of England is a remarkable place to come from. It is beautiful, resilient, and still finding its footing in a post-industrial economy. Throughout history the region has produced extraordinary engineers, inventors, scientists and innovators whose achievements are celebrated across the landscape. Artists, however, are far less visible.
Names such as Norman Cornish immediately spring to mind, and perhaps L.S. Lowry, who frequently visited my hometown of Sunderland. Stretch the geography a little further and David Hockney enters the conversation. Beyond that, the list becomes surprisingly short.
Growing up here, artistic ambition was rarely treated as a realistic career. Across countless Sunday dinner tables, dreams of becoming an artist were often met with the familiar refrain:
“That’s not a proper job.”
Without visible role models, well-funded cultural infrastructure, or obvious pathways into the profession, finding your place in the arts can feel impossible. As I explored in The Language of the Gatekeepers, even when those pathways do exist, they are often carefully guarded.
Coming from a working-class background means overcoming more than your own uncertainty. Often, everyone else doubts you too.
You begin to internalise the feeling that you’re an outsider. That you’re lucky to be here rather than deserving. That your passion should somehow compensate for poor pay, precarious employment, or unrealistic expectations. Creative workers are frequently expected to sacrifice because they supposedly “love what they do.”
That isn’t sustainable.
I’ve learned that waiting until I feel confident before making work simply isn’t an option. Confidence doesn’t arrive first; the work does.
I have experienced self-doubt countless times, but I don’t allow it to become a reason to stop. If something goes wrong, I adapt. If I make mistakes, I learn. Around here we have an olds saying: “Shy bairns get nowt.” If you don’t put yourself forward, nobody else will do it for you.
Making has never been my struggle. I create almost compulsively. If I’m prevented from making work for too long, anxiety and guilt quickly follow. Creating is how I function.
The real challenge has always been the wider cultural sector.
In practical terms, freelance artists have seen remarkably little improvement in earnings over the past two decades. When I began working professionally in 2009, a half-day workshop often paid around £125. Astonishingly, many still do. Inflation has risen dramatically, but creative labour has too often been expected to stand still.
Artists are repeatedly asked to deliver exceptional work while being treated as though their expertise is somehow worth less than that of other professionals.
The Strange Exposure of Sharing Art
The internet changed everything for me.
When I first started sharing my work, my audience was largely confined to the UK and the United States. Seventeen years later, after consistently writing, exhibiting, teaching and documenting my practice online, I have supporters across every continent.
Today my blog receives around 3,000 unique visitors every week.
For a working-class disabled woman from the North East of England, that still feels extraordinary.
Digital platforms have allowed me to bypass many of the traditional gatekeepers that previously determined whose work deserved attention. More importantly, they’ve given me the freedom to speak honestly.
That freedom matters.
Increasingly, I’ve watched organisations use artists to soften the public perception of difficult political decisions or unpopular policies. In my experience, publicly funded organisations can sometimes become uncomfortable with artists whose work questions the very systems that fund them.
I have never been interested in becoming decorative.
I didn’t become an artist to make uncomfortable truths more palatable. I didn’t become an artist to act as someone else’s public relations exercise.
I became an artist because I couldn’t imagine being anything else.
Sharing my work directly with audiences means that opportunities increasingly belong to me rather than being entirely dependent upon institutions. Although I don’t yet earn a full living online, I have built multiple income streams that continue to grow. My hope is that, over time, those combined sources of support will allow me greater independence.
That independence matters for another reason.
I live with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition that affects both my energy and immune system. I love teaching and working face-to-face, particularly with disabled and disadvantaged communities, but frequent illness has become a significant obstacle. A simple cold that once lasted days can now leave me recovering for weeks.
Building sustainable online income isn’t about avoiding people.
It’s about giving myself enough flexibility to manage my health properly so I can continue making work for many years to come.
One unexpected gift of sharing art online has been the closeness that develops between artist and audience.
People don’t simply encounter finished pieces. They witness the process, the experiments, the failures and the growth. Over time those connections become genuine. Many of the people who regularly read my work feel less like strangers and more like friends I simply haven’t met yet.
There is, of course, a balance to strike. The internet can foster incredible generosity, but intimacy with large audiences also requires healthy boundaries. Thankfully, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
Comparison in the Age of Social Media
Social media remains both a blessing and a curse.
It has opened extraordinary opportunities for artists to reach audiences without permission from galleries, publishers or institutions. At the same time, it constantly invites us to compare ourselves with everyone else.
Seeing what artists around the world are making is inspiring. It broadens our thinking and introduces us to ideas we might never otherwise encounter.
That is research.
That is community.
But measuring our worth through followers, likes or engagement is something entirely different.
Those numbers rarely reflect artistic quality.
Algorithms reward consistency, familiarity, trends and timing as much as originality. Followers can be bought. Statistics can be manipulated. Viral moments disappear as quickly as they arrive.
None of these things define meaningful creative success.
I try to remind myself that my responsibility is not to compete with every artist on the internet. It is simply to make the strongest work I can, in my own voice, at my own pace.
Persistence will always outlast trends.
I want social media to remain a tool for supporting fellow artists, discovering new ideas and sharing my own work—not a machine that quietly erodes confidence.
Use it.
Don’t let it use you.
Rejection, Silence, and continuing Anyway
Creative life contains far more rejection than celebration.
There will always be another funding application to write.
Another exhibition proposal.
Another commission that goes elsewhere.
Another email that never receives a reply.
Sometimes you spend weeks building a project that disappears into silence the moment you press “submit.”
The emotional weight of those moments can be enormous.
For every visible success in an artist’s career there are usually dozens, if not hundreds, of unseen disappointments behind it.
Yet the work continues.
History reminds us that recognition and artistic value are not always immediate companions. Vincent van Gogh remains the obvious example—not because posthumous fame should be anyone’s ambition, but because he neverstopped making despite overwhelming hardship.
The lesson isn’t that suffering creates great art.
The lesson is that making the work matters.
If you remain committed to your practice long enough, you’ll eventually look back and realise you’ve created an entire lifetime’s worth of ideas, paintings, sculptures, performances, writing or whatever your chosen medium may be.
Whether thousands of people witnessed every step or almost nobody did.
I’ve now spent seventeen years steadily building my practice.
I still don’t earn what most people would consider a comfortable living.
Some of that is because I am disabled. Some of it reflects changing government priorities and cultural policy. Some of it is simply the reality of building an independent audience over time.
Success is never determined by one single factor.
But none of those realities change the most important truth.
I’ll still be making.
Because art has never depended on certainty.
It has always depended on persistence.
Confidence That Comes From Practice
One of the greatest misconceptions about artists is that confidence arrives before the work.
In my experience, the opposite is true.
Confidence is earned slowly through repetition. Through solving problems. Through making mistakes. Through discovering that every difficult photograph or painting, every failed experiment and every rejected proposal quietly teaches you something valuable.
Looking back at older work can be an uncomfortable experience. Sometimes I see pieces I would approach completely differently today. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking.
But that discomfort is evidence of growth.
Our relationship with our own work constantly changes because we change.
External praise can feel wonderful, and it is always appreciated. We all enjoy knowing that our work has connected with someone else. But external validation is fleeting. If it becomes the only reason we create, the quiet periods become unbearable.
The deeper satisfaction comes from recognising that the work itself has meaning, regardless of whether it immediately receives applause.
After all these years, I no longer believe confidence is inherent.
I believe confidence is something artists build.
One piece at a time.
About the Artist
Jo Howell is a contemporary artist, educator, writer and disability advocate based in the North East of England. For more than seventeen years she has built an independent creative practice spanning photography, painting, sculpture, installation, community engagement and critical writing. Her work explores identity, disability, social class, politics and the emotional realities of creative life. Through her blog, YouTube channel and online community, Jo shares both the finished work and the often unseen realities of sustaining a long-term artistic practice.
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