Share Your Art Without Burnout: Lessons from Persephone
Back in January, many of us made the resolution to share our work consistently. For some of my friends, this entailed filming their sculpting process for YouTube, for others, posting their songs on TikTok. Understandably, most fell off course. The dead of winter is a hard time for resolutions. In the long, cold dark, just waking up can take resolve.
As the days lengthen, however, we find ourselves reinspired. We revisit the intentions set in January, suddenly more confident in our ability to meet them. Despite this newfound motivation, there can be discomfort: a nagging suspicion that, come the summer solstice, we’ll have lost the thread again.
Who better to look to when navigating this seasonal push and pull than the goddess of spring herself?
Legend has it that Persephone must spend half the year in the underworld, in the company of her lover and the spectres of the dead. The land is cavernous: shadowed valleys and rushing waters, castle walls that shimmer like calcite. While she dwells there, the earth above stays barren.
As the equinox approaches, Persephone begins her ascent, the land stirring awake with every step. I imagine the goddess as a tulip bulb curled beneath the ground. We ooh and ah at the bud unfurling, but surely the initial rise is painful? How could it not be, nails scraping as she claws her way through still-hard earth?
When she first sees the sky her eyes must water, the sun too harsh on her gaze and skin. But after her initial shock there would be joy: music and dancing, feasting and wine. She is beloved, awaited.
It’s Not About You (and That’s a Blessing!)
There’s one major benefit to being a lowly artist rather than a goddess, and that’s that no one is waiting for us. The ice will thaw without our presence, the leaves will start to bud. Still, despite the miniature scale of our notoriety, after a period of creative hibernation, the gazes of others can feel lewd, our glowing screens hostile.
The thing to remember is that no one’s looking at you. They’re looking at your work. That is the nectar at the tulip’s center, the sweetness that calls others forth. If you’re showing your face online (something which, in the age of AI, is helpful for building trust) your petals are just window dressing.
The reason Persephone’s return is so celebrated is because of what she heralds. Her presence signifies that the frost will cease, and over time, wheat will grow. Likewise, in your public role as a creative, you’re a herald of your work. People are interacting with you, but only within the context of that specific role.
Look at yourself as the facilitator of an artful unfurling. You emerge from your own underworld bearing strange fruit. Those who taste it are transported. They can’t enter your world, but for a moment they can see it. You’re just a salamander peering back from the undergrowth, a bird watching overhead.
Staying Rooted and the Need for Retreat
Despite the yearly exhaustion, I’ve always found inspiration easier to come by in the winter. There’s clarity in the quiet. As someone who paints fauna, flora, and fungi, I can hear the souls of the paintings murmur beneath the silence.
Come spring and summer, when the trees are heavy with their leaves and the tomatoes in my neighbour’s yard vine toward the sun, all my subjects are too busy talking to each other to have much interest in me.
The longer days may not lend themselves as well to dreaming and ideating, but they’re invaluable for executing. The ideas don’t need me, so I think less and do more, using the extended daylight to paint.
This “doing” impulse is what causes so many of us to revisit our resolutions around visibility. The birds and plants are chatting and we want to be heard too. One of the most efficient ways we know how is through the internet.
When people consume our art digitally, they're gathering pollen. This allows our message to nourish others and be dispersed. Even so. we need to check in with our roots: those tendrils that ground us to the underworld. If we don’t, we’ll be carried off by the wind.
No one wants to feel like a caged bird, on view at all times so developing expectations around retreat is vital work
Retreat can look like being vigilant about when you check your phone, or having days where you’re offline entirely. It can also look like having strong boundaries around what you do and don’t share publicly. Some things only glimmer in the dimness of privacy. Their beauty is diminished when they’re pulled from the shadows.
Artists are engaging when their work is rich. The danger of focusing solely on visibility is that the real loam of the work—the nutrients that feed it, and you—gets depleted. Your mind becomes a hummingbird: frantic and weightless at once. It's the feeling of floating you get before fainting.
Even in the bustle of spring and summer, Persephone knows she’ll return to the underworld. Below the verdant earth the arms of her husband and his silent spectres wait. Rest will come, and that makes her time in the sun all the lovelier.
The Folly of Demanding Perfection
In the end, retreat isn’t absence but preparation—the planting of a seed that’s sure to rise again.
When showing up publicly, you could demand steadfast perfection of yourself, but it’s not sustainable. You might pop your head out onto the public stage, only to have the urge to hide once more. That’s okay. You can acknowledge the feeling. The key is to create a realistic framework beforehand, so that you’re not relying on your feelings alone.
Consistency is only possible if your goals are achievable to begin with.
In an ideal world, I would be able to produce a 30 minute audio essay a week.
I would film every painting I make from start to finish, keeping you up to date on the going-on’s of my studio.
I would have an active newsletter, and a YouTube. I’d even make chatty reels—the kind where your head is floating in the frame, and you’re saying something arresting.
I’ve tried many of these things before, to no avail.
Sometimes we think it’s enough to demand excellence of ourselves. We feel a sadistic satisfaction in the asking, pride in the magnitude of the demand.
Otherwise, we minimize the task from a comfortable distance. How hard could it be to churn out a few hundred words a day? Or to turn a camera on while painting?
This approach, while seemingly impressive, is foll—perhaps, dare I say, a coward’s way out. Or at least it is if you’re like me, and have proven over and over that you can’t meet it. Having standards for yourself that you can’t maintain is akin to having none at all. A better alternative is to carefully consider what you have the stamina for.
I’m starting with a short weekly essay, and three Instagram posts. No more, no less. Your capacity may differ. This is one of those cases where honesty really is the best policy.
Examine your bandwidth beneath fluorescent lights. Then, in the soft glow of those spring sunsets, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Like a shoot breaking earth, your emergence can be painful. But once you’ve established a framework for sharing, pressure gives way to pleasure. You’re a deity in your own right, celebrating the lush landscape, and all the creatures therein. After all, you’ve shaped every one: put pen to paper or brush to palette just to breathe them into being.