You’re Better Than You Think

‘The artist will never truly appreciate their own work’

Who said this I hear you ask? Me (Tom Mangan of Rendered Retina). I first said this to someone who was at the time having trouble realising just how good they were at what they do, and it resonated with me as well. I’ve been saying to people ever since and I thought I’d share with you all exactly what I mean when I say this (even if it’s actually pretty self-explanatory).

When it comes to making your own work, performing a role, or anything in fact that you are solely responsible for, you can put incredible time an effort into making it the best it can possibly be. Take a performance for example, it starts with an idea and is followed by countless other tasks like: research, rehearsal, financing, more rehearsals and the occasional breakdown. I guess what I’m saying here is that at the end of that process you’ve probably seen your work more times than you’ve had a good night’s sleep. It’s a very draining process, no matter how proud you are of your work, you’ll always be picking holes in it, saying all of things you could have done to make it better.

Now I’m not telling you to believe everything everyone tells you about how incredibly amazing your work was, how mind-blowingly fantastic they knew it would be (don’t get me wrong that is always nice to hear but friends can sometimes be biased, maybe). What I am saying is that an audience comes in with a pair of fresh eyes, they have no idea what the original vision was, no idea of the pain and suffering that went into the making of it. This means that they are only judging the work in front of them, what is presented is the work that you wanted to create.

Be proud of the work you have made, it may not have turned out like you wanted it to, by no means does this make that work bad, just different. Try and watch it back with an open mind, as if you were seeing it for the first time. Don’t worry about the could-have-beens, the should-have-beens or the would-have-beens and you’ll see that actually you did good. There’s no need to tell anyone what you’re vision was and how different it turned out and what a tragedy this is. You’ll never appreciate your own work as much as others, remember that, you might just see the beauty that they do.

Keep it clean, keep it comic

Tom x