This week my husband and I spent three days at a creative conference.

Mostly it was designers and illustrators, no writers at all, but still it was amazing to be in a place with so many other creative people and admire their work from the sidelines.

And then.

On the last day, a friend of mine spoke about building a platform from a business perspective. It was helpful even for me, even though I come from a completely different creative pursuit, and I knew it would be especially helpful to all the other hand-lettering artists who are trying to do what he has already successfully done: get their art recognized and appreciated.

Right after his talk, someone tweeted something disrespectful and rude and, frankly, immature.

Someone who was there.

Someone who was one of us.

And, see, I just felt so angry. I felt angry for my friend and for hand-lettering artists and for all of us.

And then I felt sad.

I felt sad that we can feel so threatened by someone else’s success that we think it says something about us. That we feel the need to discount another artist. That we let hate slide in to our hearts.

I felt sad that we don’t know how to share our space well.

I felt sad that we seem to have so much trouble finding a way to cheer one another on in our similar pursuits.

I am no exception. I have never ridiculed publicly, but I have felt threatened and ruffled and discounted and territorial and afraid.

This needs to change.

Our inability to share the art world and support other artists and help these talented people do what they do really just boils down to fear.

We are afraid that if a writer is successful with their writing, there will not be room for us. We are afraid that if this artist “makes it” with that hand-lettering style that looks so much like ours, there will not be any work for us. We are afraid of that husband/wife musical duo gaining 1 million followers on their YouTube channel because we think it means we will never see an audience gather around us.

Saturation of the market is a lie.

Saturation of the market says we live under the laws of scarcity.

It says:

1. There is not enough to go around, so we must be the best.
2. If someone else is more “successful” in their art than we are, we must not be the best.
3. We must protect ourselves by proving those others artists are not the best.

Best and better and all those other comparison words have no place in the creative world, unless we’re talking of our own progression of art. When we are comparing our work to another’s, we are an island of alone, and artists cannot survive and keep creating art on an island of alone.

Because, at the heart of it all, we are people. People need relationships. People need community.

Comparing kills relationships. Championing restores them.

So there are some things I want us to remember.

1. There is enough room for all of us.
2. The way our art expresses itself through us is not the same way art expresses itself through that other person (unless we’re intentionally trying to copy them).
3. We belong to each other.

The last one is the most important.

We are an artist community. Creating beauty for a world that may or may not appreciate it is an incredibly lonely pursuit, and we need to be cheering each other along the way.

We need to admire each other and we need to be admired, but we will do neither if we’re only interested in discounting those by whom we feel threatened.

We need to be giving to each other, not taking away.

Giving instruction. Giving away our secrets. Giving away the strategies that have worked for us. Giving support. Giving encouragement. Giving lessons we’ve learned so others don’t waste their time making the same mistake that cost us a year.

It feels scary to give when this is our livelihood, but relationships are ALWAYS better than existing alone.

So let’s take care with each other’s hearts. Let’s respect one another for who we are.

Let’s turn our lonely art into community art.

Challenge: Introduce your followers to another artist whose works you admire or to someone by whom you feel threatened. Oftentimes feeling threatened by another’s work only means we are operating under the lies of scarcity. Root out those lies and share another’s art. Encourage them. Champion them.