how to know your inner critic so well you can banish them
Before you dive in, rest assured this essay was written using 100% human intelligence. I do not use AI in my work. You can read my full AI Policy here.
Making art and trusting yourself to be safe and embrace your unique voice is scary. We all have loud, boisterous inner critics that take shape as brutal and cruel censors. Mine is named Frank. He wears a tacky polyester business suit and is always shouting about synergy and efficiency like a street-corner evangelist. He looks like what would happen if Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad was put in a blender with Frank as the art critic from Always Sunny and the old Rankin and Bass Heat Miser. His skin is the color of an orange highlighter with tiny, pointy, claw-like hands, making him hard to ignore. Giving Frank a body, and recognizing that he’s an entity I have to deal with every day makes me fear him less.
I don’t know any artist, musician, writer, or genuine creative person who hasn’t had to battle one of these characters themselves. So what do we do when we’re afraid that our work isn’t good enough or when we feel afraid to make our art? We have to locate and define our Frank.
The first step is naming this character.
What does your critic look like? Make a silly unhinged mood board. Make your fears concrete in your head.
my Frank moodboard, made in Procreate.
Next, envision where you can go to escape your critic, but be wary of cracks where they can sneak in.
Ideally, as a visual artist. sketchbooks should be a Frank-free zone. Creative, rebellious, internal practice spaces for weird ideas and chaotic experiments. But In the age of social media, we can see inside other artists’ sketchbooks and use them to compare and despair. Everybody is performing and because of that, it is easy to see something getting rewarded with more likes or views and then shut down.[1] Comparison invites Frank over to lecture and cajole. I get caught in comparison still and am not above it. Yet knowing who this critic is avoids the mysterious fog of self doubt like a wet blanket weighing you down.
This week I finished a genuine slog of a sketchbook that felt like thick mud until I hit the final third of it. It required finally taking a good hard look at why I was not making any art and spending the majority of my days sitting in front of a computer, typing and not creating. The sketchbook began in October of 2024 and was a slow burn attempting to experiment and then letting doubt run amok. For a solid 10 months, the book became a site for only giving simple demos for my students in tutoring sessions and classes.
My spouse kept popping into my studio and asking “hey, are you gonna paint today” and my response would always be “I want to but I have this… other thing that I have to do”
When I identified Frank — uninvited, meddling in my shit — my approach to my sketchbook changed.
The more I found myself using these excuses and reasons to play it safe and not make art, I knew there was something keeping me down. I was choosing general-purpose freelancer as a default mode, being pulled into totally random client projects instead of my own work. Who was the feudal lord getting in my way telling me what would be sellable, what would be safe? It was Frank.
When I identified Frank uninvited, meddling in my shit, my approach to my sketchbook changed. I journaled about how he was a representation of the larger cultural expectations: the fears of being a starving artist, the sarcastic remarks from old coworkers that I was an influencer now, the way my videos kept bombing on the YouTube algorithm. Frank was my imaginary Big Business Boss. A devilish middle-manager in a tacky power suit, telling me what was allowed and what wasn’t, highlighting my failures and reminding me of them at every turn.
The whole reason I went out on my own to work for myself was to avoid having a shitty manager that only cared about prestige and KPIs. I had to fire Frank, or as my spouse often said “unionize”
You can see in the book’s thick wobble near the end that something in me snapped, became wild, went feral. Everyday I suddenly craved time to spend in devotion to my practice, a giant “fuck you Frank!” I hungered to create, savoring the process and what would come through me. Wires came loose in my brain and drawing after drawing poured out of me like a torrent. I finally felt deeply alive as an artist, owning the desire to make my work, despite the practice of art being a part of my job.
I couldn’t allow Frank’s influence to keep me spending everyday on a computer letting my oil paint dry, wasted on the palette with pieces unfinished. They were haunting the backgrounds of my Zoom meetings.
holding my sketchbook upside-down so you can witness the pages buckling in the latter half
We have reasons for giving our inner critics authority. It’s often related to something a trusted adult or mentor told you to do.
Since quitting Apple in 2023 to go all in on being an artist there has been this beating and incessant pressure from Frank. He’s an embodiment of every cruel enshittified algorithm, telling me how much I needed to be working and posting. Even my art was constrained and safe. Under pressure to create beautiful things for an imagined audience and focusing on my technical competency rather than play, I’d come to my desk with the goal creating things I could turn into zines, prints, stickers, and other products.
The reality is, Frank was my awful inner boss who told me painting was a waste of time if I couldn’t sell it. Instead I spent countless hours on other, safer income streams, building classes, tutoring, teaching, writing newsletters, and doing the marketing work but rarely ever doing the art.
I listened to this impulse because I never actually thought the art I was making was good enough because I got so caught up in comparison. My videos where I featured my art performed terribly.[2] I was struggling to sell my work online and only found success through in-person markets. I was afraid to be myself in my work even though I was my own boss. I was the one calling the shots and building the to-do lists. Sure the work I was making was technically proficient, but I always felt like there was a crucial bit of magic missing, like a salad without a dressing. Everything was safe and broadly palatable because I was scared of failing.
a massive shift is happening in my work. On the left is a painting I made in early 2024 and turned into prints (that are now on sale on my website) of a Mourning Cloak. On the right is a playful sketch of frogs mating in a bog. More on that painting in a bit…
This sketchbook taught me that Frank is wrong.
Art is wild and full of whimsy. It’s a feral animal that can’t be controlled. As a musician and a writer, I know that my best work comes from just showing up and bearing witness to what comes through my body. It’s always a surprise! Yet, as a visual artist, I have spent years desperately trying to prove myself and my competency above all else. Maybe it’s the cruelty of social media algorithms. Maybe it’s internalized misogyny. Maybe it’s the myth of the starving artist. Maybe it’s the cruelty of my former professors and marketing coaches. More than likely it’s my own internalized capitalism keeping a lid on the work I want to be making. The curse of trying to turn something you love doing into your job.
The pull to try and make beautiful things that prove our technical skill or knowledge of craft is a struggle I see in my students all the time. This desire to make sure that they learn to draw realism, and have a beautiful result by simply showing up, creates blocks and levels of intimidation that keep them listening to their Frank. I watch the fear lead to abandoning their unique human style. Students imagine being graded on making art “correctly”. In a culture that expects artists to be producers and workers making predictable products, we long for an end result that we can rely on. We want art that we can control. We long to make art that feels domesticated and safe.
Deep down though, I knew this “safety” I was chasing was short lived and short sighted. Art school taught me to work like a factory: to build a system, execute the pieces for a show in succession, based on theory. Always operating within really controlled rails. Focusing on what the imagined audience would want rather than myself. Like a circus, I was teaching the wild animal elements of myself to be rigid and strict. To correctly render things that looked good. But in this sketchbook, I finally felt compelled to let go of the expectations of others. To rewild my craft.
I’ve started doubling down into the magic of art, into the possibility of what can come through my body. Letting go of my meticulous need to control and embracing a new, playful, feral self.
a colored pencil drawing of a fisherman on the rocks at Garrapata State Park from late 2024. I finished this one before a post-election depression made me pause this practice almost entirely
In this moment of economic uncertainty and change, our inner critics make us internalize what is going wrong and push harder.
The early drawings in this book showed hints of me starting to get free and let loose, but I always heard Frank telling me “this won’t sell, you need to focus on your KPIs!” So I abandoned this book and set art aside for practical matters or places where I felt needed. Frank kept reminding me that my art wasn’t selling like those other artists with bigger follower counts. To be transparent, I made a few thousand dollars selling my art and prints the past few years. When combined with teaching and freelance I was making justenough, but Frank was a relentless shareholder that wanted 10k months.
I started this full time artist gig in 2023, when there were no more pandemic stimulus checks bolstering working-class spending and now I had to contend with social media platforms burying or openly resenting artists. Spending 35 hours a week on Tiktok was pointless. I went viral talking about my work, but sold no art or prints. I had to pivot my time and energy to attract new freelance clients for Project Support work, launch another class, write better paid newsletters, connect with more tutoring and retreat clients. Honestly, to survive.
But by September of last year, the state of the world made even survival feel untenable. I was burnt out from following unsustainable launch strategies that mimicked tech crunch culture I finally had to say enough! The work of making art is for me, and no one else. Get lost Frank!
I pumped the brakes and took a hiatus from the computer this winter to paint more. I started looking at books from Hieronymus Bosch and Georgia O’Keeffe. I had to follow the wild artists from history and figure out my own path forward. I didn’t know what I wanted my art to look like anymore, but I wrote this in my sketchbook before I took off embracing the feral:
a handwritten note in my sketchbook that reads “creativity itself is an act of rebellion in an era focused on optimization + manipulation thru data”
I let myself make things that felt wild, loose and free. Mixing materials and techniques in manners that Frank thought was ugly but my body was excited by. I leaned into my love and fascination with the world. I made everything about obsession and romance with the earth and nature itself. I’m absolutely in love with this planet we live on. I wrote a sticky note on my easel that said:
“Your purpose right now is to make art. You must seduce people into the pleasures of loving nature by loving it through how you paint and cherish it.”
a pencil drawing and gouache painting of mossy and lichen covered coast redwood bark spotted in the ancient forests of Del Norte County, California.
I dug out weird old materials like Lyra graphite crayons and water soluble pencils and started breaking every rule that I thought I had to follow. Investigating every single should with a critical eye and asking where the rules came from in the first place? Were these hungover from art school? Was I letting the unhinged troll comments get to my head?
Knowing our inner critic allows us to do the exact opposite of what they want. We can work on our art as an act of rebellion against empire.
I started painting my dreams. I let myself paint and draw the things that made me cry in the forest with wonder and grief. I leaned into the feelings of it all and the intensity of emotion.
I’m living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the heart of the bullshit AI empire hellbent on destroying the earth and the beauty that inspires me. These companies don’t care if they crush entire labor industries with their delusional fantasies of creating superintelligence. I resent all of these companies. Art itself is an act of resistance and rebellion against the current modes of empire. I might fail, according to Frank, but I know for a fact I am making better work and tending to the things that matter most. The things that keep me, and my community, making art.
In the end, our inner critics can be loud, and can say whatever they want. Frank wants me to build a seven-figure business. I’d rather paint frogs mating in a vernal pond. Figuring out who our inner critics are is a leap towards embracing our art and working at the speed of devotion.
the final painting in my sketchbook I titled Seven Figure Business, after I was accused of being unambitious, not wanting to build towards a seven-figure goal. I realized the only seven figure business I care about is the treefrogs mating in the vernal ponds.
If you want to read more about my thoughts on art, fear, and doing hard things, I wrote a whole essay about why art is like backpacking. Read it and watch the film that goes along with it:
art making is scary! let’s talk about it.
Magic Announcements 🔮:
Starting today, you can sign up for my brand new group tutoring program over on Patreon! Artists, writers, musicians, film makers, and creative humans of all kinds are welcome. We are building an alternative art school that centers freedom over prestige.
Monthly this group will meet live online and have chats in between to persistently cultivate our creative craft. The first session in May will be a guided demo devoted to identifying our own version of Frank and figuring out what is blocking our work. You can sign up and explore the various tiers here:
Confused by the different memberships I offer?
As a reminder, Frank does want me to let you know the primary way I make money is through teaching live classes and working with folks 1-on-1 in the containers of tutoring, retreats, and project support. You can explore each of those offers in-depth right here on my website.
One final thing, I posted a version of my “What does ai sobriety look like in practice” essay over on Youtube as a video version. Check it out if you’re looking for robot-free strategies to stay creative in these weird times.
Thanks for reading, and until next time, stay creative and find your own ways to persistently bloom.
-Mel
for more on this, read this great essay, When sharing becomes the creative work, by my friend Carolyn Yoo!
the number of times I have cried or had a day ruined over the awful youtube stats dashboard is too many
