Rejected, Ghosted, Forgotten: A Love Letter to the Unchosen / Part III and final

"Don’t stop, even if you’re broken."

— ojolo [surviving edition]

Some names survive the centuries not because they were loved in their time, but because they refused to disappear.

Hilma af Klint painted visions no one was ready to see and kept painting anyway.

El Greco stretched light and shadow beyond reason, alone in his defiance.

Cézanne faced rejection after rejection, building the foundations of modern painting in silence.

Gauguin exiled himself to Tahiti, painting far from the noise, far from the applause.

We imagine artists as surrounded by salons, patrons, and constant praise. In truth, the life of an artist is lonelier than it appears, a long walk through unlit corridors where you carry your own torch.

It is in that solitude that the work takes shape, untouched by fashion, built to outlast the voices that once ignored it.

Hilma af Klint - Svanen No 17

By antonomasia, you don’t become a visual artist, you are born one, and you die one. You need creation as breathing. Rejoice, pain, failure, success. Tears, sweat, enlightenment, darkness. Melancholy, love, air, life — and finally, death in the gaze — all come with the art package. Pretty much like life itself, only raised to the third power. You don’t just live art; you survive it. That’s why rejection is a permanent burning flame inside the artist’s soul, and the eternal motion machine of the maker. Fewer will be known and acclaimed. The rest of us will fight until our last breath, entering our own Valhalla as ultimate eye warriors — the flame of rejection still burning in our chests.

Rejected, Ghosted, Forgotten: A Love Letter to the Unchosen – Part III and Final