I have artwork sitting in my basement waiting. Pieces on paper, canvas, wood panels, even old cabinet doors. All in various stages of completion, waiting for me to decide they’re ready. The problem is my eye always finds something that could be better. A color that looks muddy. A value that feels flat. A composition that needs more (or less).
So they wait, piling up in a basement studio for another day.
You’ve probably heard the phrase perfect is the enemy of good. Creatives hear it so often it becomes wallpaper: present, nodded at, ignored. But lately I’ve been thinking about what perfectionism actually costs. In work that hasn’t been seen. In a shop I haven’t opened. In a website I kept planning instead of building.
Here’s what perfectionism is without its flattering clothes: Fear wearing a quality-control badge. It says the work isn’t ready. Often, it means you don’t feel ready—to be seen, judged, or to let something exist in the world without protecting it.
I think about the small pieces of art I’ve left for strangers during my art-and-found events. They go out with no big ceremony, no controlled reveal. I never know who will find them or what they’ll think. Those pieces I release easily enough. The giving is the point. And yet, for work I might sell, I apply a harsher standard. The free work goes freely. The work I might charge for, I hold hostage.
I’m pretty sure every artist has some version of this story. The finished album never released. The manuscript getting one more edit. The Etsy shop perpetually “coming soon.” Many artists say a website can wait until the work finds its audience first. Maybe so. But for me, it became a convenient excuse.
At my core, I’m a marketer. I’ve built a career around digital presence, branding, and communication. I believe a website can be an artwork in itself.It’s not just a storefront. It’s how you see yourself and your work. Which meant building mine became its own perfectionism trap. It had to be right. It had to be art.
What I’m learning is that done doesn’t mean indifferent. It means trusting that the version of you who made it was present and honest and that the world deserves a chance to meet that version of you. So here’s what done looks like for me right now: The website is live.
That’s the leap. The move from someday to someday soon. The shop will come when it comes. I’m still working on that part. But I am closer.
And I’m done with something else too. I’m done calling my art a hobby. That word gave me permission to stay small. To keep the stakes low. To treat my creative life as adjacent to my real one instead of central to it. It was another way of not releasing the work.
I am an artist.
That’s the whole sentence. The most creative thing I’ve done in a long time is finally letting that be true.
