What is your art worth, my dear friend? I write this as someone who has been writing for 25 years, whose writing is infused with the type of experience I would not wish on anyone. I write this as someone who wakes at 4am to write with a broken French Press and discount Lebanese coffee, as someone who spends her evenings creating digital art with pharmacy glasses as I cannot afford prescription lenses.
So, you tell me that your jewellery is not worth the price tag, though I know you have spent years training and hours making the piece which you undersell. I have seen the callouses on your fingers and the chisel slices taken from your hands.
You tell me your art is not worth the price, and I tell you the problem is not your jewellery, nor the price-tag.
The problem is that you do not yet know your worth.
Because there must be something beyond the daily labour that reduces us to automatons. A rationale for placing one foot beyond the other. There are those who say they are not creative, but even they enjoy a unique bangle bought, a song on the car radio played in peak hour traffic, a series on Netflix, a spring garden that they tend.
Art makes life bearable, my dear friend. It gives us a reason to keep going, and you might say well that this the role of children, or a partner, or a pet. But love itself is an artform, a creative practice infused with intuition and hard work.
Art gives us a reason to breathe, dear friend.
Please know your worth.
Word upon Word 