Why I Choose to Make Art the Hard Way
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Why did I choose such a difficult and time-consuming way to make art?
It's a question I ask myself more often than you'd think — especially in the middle of a block printing session that's taken hours longer than I planned. The short answer is: it wasn't planned at all. But to really understand it, you have to understand what most people get wrong about being a working artist in the first place.
The Myth of the "Naturally Talented" Artist
There's a persistent idea out there that artists are anointed at birth with some special talent — that it just comes out of them naturally, and when they do it, it looks effortless and almost magical. People love to watch an artist work and remark on how talented they are.
It's really not like that at all.
I don't believe artists are granted some gift the rest of us don't have. I believe everyone starts with roughly the same raw material. The differences between people aren't as great as we like to think. Where the real difference gets made is in interest — having a genuine interest in art, which can get sparked in childhood or adulthood, in all kinds of ways. Once that interest takes hold, a person becomes far more likely to put in the work to develop actual skill.
That's where it comes from. At least, that's where it came from for me. I wasn't born with anything extra — just the same raw material everyone else has.
The Other Myth: The Easy, Well-Paid Artist Life
There's a second misconception that's just as frustrating: the idea that artists have this easy, breezy way of life. That we sleep in, work whenever we feel like it, and charge whatever we want — and if you haggle, you can talk the price down because we're desperate for the money.
For anyone who treats art as an actual profession, none of that is true.
I don't like to haggle over prices, and I don't think that's fair to the people who don't try to. I work hard at figuring out what my prices should be — not just fair to the buyer, but fair to myself. How do I price my work so I can actually sell it, avoid a giant backlog, and still make enough to keep doing this? That's really all pricing is. We need to buy supplies. We need to pay bills.
Most artists who are successful artistically are also successful financially — not in the sense of having a lot of money, but in the sense of being able to conserve what they have and live like an artist actually lives. Which mostly means not buying things you want very often. Most of what an artist spends money on is things the work requires. We're more likely to buy art supplies before we buy food.
That all artists lead an easy, well-paid lifestyle is a toxic assumption, and it hurts everyone who's actually pursuing art as a living — the people with a business card that declares "I'm an artist," the ones who wake up, make art, and go to sleep, and that's the whole job.
Artists Aren't Trying to Get Rich
I'll speak for the majority of us here, not all of us: we're not out to get rich. Sure, it would be nice. Everyone thinks that. But deep down, most working artists know that if we suddenly had all the money, it would change everything — and not for the better. We wouldn't be able to pursue the work the same way. I've actually seen it happen: an artist comes into money, and suddenly they can't make art anymore.
There's something almost necessary about the pressure of needing to sell your work to put food on the table, pay the light bill, and buy more supplies to make more art to sell. It's a cycle — the same cycle everyone lives, whether you're an artist, an architect, a plumber, or a dentist. We work just like everyone else. Some days I think I work harder than anyone else out there, and if I just had their job, I'd be so much more relaxed. But that's not most days.
Artists don't set out from the beginning to make money. We set out to make art — to chase down whatever's bugging us, whatever idea is driving us a little bit mad until we figure it out. Then we move on to the next thing, or we keep working the same thing until we've exhausted what we can learn from it.
Because that's really what we're doing: we're not learning how to make art. We're learning ourselves. The work is how we examine our own capabilities. The end result is often disappointing, if I'm honest — because the vision in your head is always better than the reality. Vision doesn't have flaws. Reality does. At some point you have to accept that it's close enough, set it aside, turn it to the wall, and come back to it later. Otherwise you could spend your whole life on one piece and finish nothing.
We're never done until we're done — and half the time, we don't even know what "done" looks like when we start.
Yes, This Is Actually Work
I paint outdoors a lot, on the shores of Lake Tahoe, and people will walk by and say, "What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon." They don't have a clue. I'm at work — the same way a surgeon is at work in a hospital. I'm not out there soaking in the sun and listening to the waves. I'm focused. Every artist I've painted alongside over the years is the same way. We're working.
If it's not work, you have to ask whether it's really art. Art is difficult brain work. It's the product of thought, not the product of just doing something. Rarely does something good happen by accident — and if it does, it usually can't be repeated. Serendipity doesn't nurture the next piece. Only hard work does.
So, Why Block Printing?
Which finally brings me back to the question I started with.
I first discovered block printing — technically classified as relief printing — back in the 1980s, in college. I took an intaglio printing class and a relief printing class, and I was fascinated. I gravitated toward relief printing especially. But like most students, I had to move on to other coursework once those classes ended. I loved it, though, and I told myself that someday I'd get back to it and explore it further.
"Someday" didn't arrive until COVID.
With galleries closed and painting sales on hold, I suddenly had the time I'd never had before. I thought, this is the moment to go explore that thing I loved decades ago. So I did — and I assumed it would be a temporary detour before I went back to canvases.
Instead, I fell in love with the process all over again. It invigorated me. It breathed a whole new life into my work, artistically. And as long as that's true, I don't think about how much labor each piece demands. It doesn't bother me. I think about the idea, and then I think about what I need to do next to get it done, and I just keep moving forward. I never sit there thinking, oh my god, there's so much work ahead. I just do what I do.
Some pieces come together quickly. Others take a long time. But right now, block printing is the vehicle that lets me say what I want to say.
That's really all it is. There's nothing more to it.
Craig Mitchell is an artist working primarily in relief (block) printing, exploring the medium after rediscovering it decades after first learning it in college. Every piece in his shop is the product of exactly the kind of hard, unhurried work described above — carved, inked, and pulled by hand, one print at a time. See the current collection.