These days, I find myself moving away from asking if a piece of work meets some "good enough" standard. Earlier on in my art career, this question always seemed to be with me.

The question that sits underneath

Is this good enough to share? Good enough compared to what I’ve seen other people doing?

And that question usually carries another more pernicious question underneath it, doesn’t it?

The real question I was probably asking myself was ‘Am I good enough?'

A different energy in the studio

I notice a very different energy in my studio now. I’m unsure if that’s due to my age, experience or my hormones.

It could, in part, be from a sense of rage and rebellion against powerful men getting away with terrible things. Just witnessing what is playing out on the world stage makes me want to be far less accommodating, less appeasing, less approval seeking.

I have found myself to be increasingly uninterested in asking whether something is good enough. It’s an impossible binary grading system, that is often unhelpful.

A more profound question

I’m much more interested in asking something perhaps more meaningful:

Does this feel how I want it to feel?

The questions I ask myself about my art are now more along the lines of: Does it feel true to what I wanted to explore? Have I stayed with the idea long enough to see what happens?

When the answer is yes, the work becomes much easier to stand behind. This is what I’ve made. This is what I wanted to explore today. This is what needed to come out of me and onto the page.

The lens change from 'Is this good enough?' to 'Does this feel right to me?' It is a shift from judgement to expression. From caring what other people may say to caring what I feel. From outside of me to inside of me.

And I wonder…could this be a useful reframe for you too, what would happen if, instead of asking 'Is this good enough?', you asked 'Does this feel how I want it to feel?'