You miss 100% of the shots you don't take

let's do some application target practice together

Hello Friends

Here’s a new photo of me in my happy place!

Photo: Thibault Gras

I’ve been incredibly grateful to have been able to spend more time in here since I received the MacRobert Trust Art Award for Painting last autumn. The cushion of this financial award has allowed me to make bigger work that takes more time and materials to create, work that I know I might not be able sell easily, but that pushes me creatively.

Salted Light, 2024, acrylic on aluminium panel, 180 cm x 110 cm

It’s been exciting (in a slow burn kind of way!) Something happens when you push the scale like this. It takes you so much deeper into the process, and the viewer comes with you, into the fine web of detail. I’m working on another one just now. I’m still building up the layers but this last one has been drawn with silver ink.

Wave Cloud Breath, work in progress, acrylic on aluminium panel, 180 x 110 cm

Wave Cloud Breath detail, with silver lines…

I gave a webinar session recently to go through the application form and criteria for the MacRobert Trust Art Award. I really wanted to encourage more people to apply, especially women, because it has been so valuable for me.

But someone on the session said that they felt a bit discouraged when they saw my ‘glittering’ career laid out in my CV. I laughed out loud at the word ‘glittering’. Because, truth be told, it doesn’t feel glittering from the inside.

If anything, it has felt more like dogged persistence. Like 35 years of not giving up.

But the comment got me thinking. And I realised that when you see a CV or artist’s resumé with lots of residencies and exhibitions and achievements listed on it, what you don’t see are all the failures, the rejected applications, the opportunities they didn’t get. All those ‘we regret to inform you…’ letters, the politely worded invitations to ‘please re-apply next year’.  Believe me, I have had a lot of them.

I mean, a lot.

I was fascinated to read a recent piece by

Hall W. Rockefeller

in her newsetter Less Than Half on why women artists receive less awards and prizes than male artists do.

She draws from a recently published study from the Netherlands, which shows the stats:

Women… apply for fewer subsidies [than men], and also receive them less often. “Research into three subsidy arrangements from the Mondriaan Fonds shows that 52 percent of the total awarded amounts goes to men, 45 percent goes to women, and three percent goes to non-binary artists and others who did not fill in a gender on their application form,” said the foundation.

Artists also earn money by winning prizes... There is equality among the winners, said the Boekman Foundation.

“The split between the amount of female winners (54 percent) and male winners (43 percent) reflects the ratio in the job market. The remaining 3 percent consists of an artist collective.”

It’s not that we win them less often. It’s that we just don’t put ourselves forward as often as our male colleagues.

Now, I know there are many complicating factors at play here, not least the caring responsibilities that often fall mainly on women, or the need for another paid job, both of which can mean that even finding time to write those applications is difficult, never mind take up the opportunity they offer.

But I have had several conversations recently with coaching clients who had already counted themselves out of applying for something simply because they didn’t think they would get it.

I am here to tell you - that is not your decision to make.

Because, as Hall puts it so memorably: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

I want more women artists making more applications, taking more shots, and getting more opportunities. As I wrote about last week, we are not in competition with each other, even if it feels like it sometimes. We are collaborators in this great work of art.

So am running a free workshop for artists. Look at it as ‘target practice’ for art applications. Bring an opportunity you want to apply for and we’ll go through the details together. You’ll leave with a checklist of exactly what you need and when, so you are ready to get those applications out and move right onto the next one….and the next…and the next. If it goes well and it’s useful, I’ll do one every month, so sign up below if you want to get involved. Let’s fill that target with holes!

Life Raft Co-Working

Maybe you can join us to work on your application on our regular weekly Zoom co-working sessions, every Wednesday 3 pm to 4.30 pm BST. Or join us to do something creative, or read, or just reconnect with that creative state of mind. You can bookmark the link as it’s the same one each week.

And if you can’t make it or missed last week, here’s last week’s replay.

New LifeBuoy Chat!

By popular demand I’ve started a new Chat. Regulars of our Life Raft co-working space have been asking me for ages, for a way to share images and continue our conversation between our live sessions. You’re very welcome to join in if you can’t make our sessions due to the time. Reluctantly, I’ve had to make it for paid subscribers only to keep that sense of a small, supportive community, a safe space for our creative play. But if you can’t manage the subscriptions drop me a quick message and I’ll sort you out with access, no questions asked. Here’s the link!

That’s it for this week!

– Sam

PS. If you missed last week’s post here’s another chance to read it.