I thought I was ready for rejection. I wasn't.

I shared a video on Youtube this week all about receiving a hurtful rejection. You can find the video below, but basically I had entered a couple of competitions and the first response came in - it was a no. My reaction was a surprise to me. I was genuinely knocked back.

After I shared the video, I received a few interesting comments.

Why enter competitions at all?

Why do you want someone else to judge your work?

And

Don’t you always tell us that we should paint for ourselves rather than seeking outside validation?

These are good questions—because, on the surface, there does seem to be a contradiction.

If I genuinely believe in making the work that feels true to me, why should I care whether a panel of judges approves of it?

The answer is that I think there is an important difference between making work for other people and wanting the work you make to be seen by other people. 

Painting only for outside validation means allowing an imagined audience to enter the studio with you. It means wondering what will sell, what judges might choose, what a gallery might find acceptable or what will receive the most praise online—and then changing the work in response.

That is something I simply do not do. When I’m painting, the only thing that matters is the painting. I have to follow my own curiosity, make my own decisions and trust my own responses. If I ever started trying to anticipate what someone else wants, I would lose touch with the very thing that might make the work interesting.

But once the painting is finished, something changes for me. I don’t make art purely as a private form of therapy - I make it because I have something I want to communicate.

At the moment, I’m exploring memory, family, identity and the strange emotional power of old photographs. I’m interested in what we know now that the people in those photographs didn’t know then. I’m interested in what survives, what disappears, and how our understanding of the past changes the way we see ourselves.

These ideas matter to me—and I want to see how far I can take them.

But I also want other people to encounter the work. I want the paintings to leave my studio and exist in the world. I want them to make someone feel something. I want them to stir a memory, provoke a feeling or cause someone to think differently about their own family and their own past.

And if I want that to happen, I have to find ways to put the work in front of people. 

That is where exhibitions and competitions come in.

I don’t enter them because I want a panel of judges to tell me whether I am a "good" artist. I enter because selection can give the work a larger platform. It can bring it to people who would never otherwise know that the paintings exist.

Of course, the difficulty is that those two things can become tangled. Even when you know that it's all subjective and even though you know there are a million factors, rejection can still feel like a verdict. For a short time, it can make you question the work, your direction, and perhaps even your right to want more for it.

That was what happened to me this week. My paintings weren’t selected for the Women in Art Prize, and although I had told myself I was ready for rejection, I discovered that knowing it might happen and experiencing it were two very different things.

I did want to be selected; I did want that opportunity for my work.

And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. Ambition is not automatically a betrayal of authenticity. Wanting your work to reach a wider audience doesn’t mean you made it to please that audience.

The real question is: At what point do other people’s opinions begin to change what happens in the studio?

If rejection persuaded me to abandon the ideas that matter to me and start making paintings I thought judges would prefer, then I would be giving away my authority. But if it sends me back into the studio determined to go deeper—to become more skilled, more honest and more fully myself—then it can be useful.

Several commenters mentioned Van Gogh as an example of an artist who didn't care what others thought. This just a fundamental misunderstanding of the man - he cared deeply what others thought. He desperately wanted his work to be seen and appreciated. BUT only if it was appreciated as it was. He did not change the work to please gallerists and buyers - he continued on his own path while always hoping that the art world would see what he saw, and invite him into their midst.

That is what I’m trying to do now. I want to make the work on my own terms—and then do everything I can to help it find its audience.

Art may begin as a private conversation between the artist and the work. But for me, at least, that isn’t where it ends. I want to communicate, and communication requires someone on the other side.