What Truly Separates the Artist from the Hobbyist
(“Alone,” Artwork by Artist and Author Harrison Love)
What Truly Separates the Artist from the Hobbyist
The true artist is not defined by output, but by a mind reshaped through the search for unseen depths. A single act can carry the gravity of the sea.
(“Samhain Skin,” by Leonora Carrington)
The Illusion of Output
In an era of endless timelines, content calendars, and algorithmic pressure, we’ve come to associate creativity with productivity. The more you post, the more you paint, the more you publish; the more legitimate you seem. The illusion is simple: that volume is virtue, and quantity is proof of talent. But this is a distortion, a reflection of the digital age’s obsession with metrics, not meaning.
Some of the most transformative artists in history created infrequently, quietly, or in ways that didn’t conform to the pace of their time. Consider Leonora Carrington, the Surrealist painter and writer who, despite being courted by fame and the Paris art world, fled to Mexico and spent her life exploring the mystical and the interior. Her art wasn’t born of output, it was born of a life steeped in personal myth, transformation, and silence.
“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my destiny,” she once said.
A single painting from Carrington carries a lifetime of inquiry; spiritual, symbolic, and fiercely personal. Her sparse public appearances and limited interviews only deepened the sense that her art was not a response to attention, but to an inward calling. There was weight in each gesture, because it came from depth.
When we confuse the act of making with the evidence of mastery, we overlook the fundamental truth of artistic practice: it’s not the repetition of output that defines an artist, but the internal state that drives the work. Hobbyists may be prolific. Artists may be quiet. But what separates them is not how much they make it is how deeply they’ve learned to see.
(“Hill Women,” Artwork by Amrita Sher-Gil)
Depth as Discipline
To create from depth is not a moment of inspiration it’s a conditioned practice developed over time. A discipline of attention, of patience, of repeatedly sitting with mystery instead of filling it too quickly with meaning. True artists spend years cultivating this interior world, navigating its silences, its contradictions, its hidden corners.
This work often goes unseen. It isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t yield quick results or clean resolutions. It requires staying in relationship with uncertainty; the unresolved image, the unspeakable feeling, the half-formed idea. Over time, this practice reshapes perception itself. The artist’s lens becomes tuned to nuance, to emotional tremors, to the subtle shifts of consciousness that ripple beneath the obvious.
Amrita Sher-Gil, the Indo-Hungarian painter whose short life left behind a legacy which carried an emotional gravity that came not from perfection, but from her devotion to representing life as she felt it. She painted women in moments of interiority; pensive, still, and unidealized. There was no performance in her gaze, only presence.
“I am an individual with a deep appreciation for the inner world and a spiritual hunger that drives my art,” Sher-Gil wrote.
Her discipline was not in volume, but in vision. She sought truth, not the pretty kind, but the kind that sits heavy in the chest and doesn’t explain itself.
This is what separates the artist from the casual creator: a devotion to inner searching that trains perception like a muscle. It is not talent alone that elevates the artist , it is the transformation of the mind.
(Detail of a Self Portrait by Harrison Love)
Art as a Consequence of Perception
The art itself, the painting, the poem, the performance is only the evidence. What matters more is the precious and fleeting perception that produced it. In the artist, perception becomes consecrated, not just seeing what is, but perceiving what could be, or what lies just beneath. This is the invisible work behind every brushstroke that moves you.
Forough Farrokhzad, the Iranian poet and filmmaker, spoke of this kind of perception often. Her work was forged in a cultural and political climate that denied women agency, voice, and expression. Yet through her poems and her groundbreaking film The House is Black, she shattered conventions and created work that felt not only emotionally raw but prophetic in its depth.
“I will plant my hands in the garden. I will grow. I know, I know, I know…”
These words were not metaphor, they were a declaration. They reveal an artist whose mind had undergone a fundamental shift: from seeking approval to seeking truth. From performing identity to becoming it.
This is where the hobbyist and the artist part ways. The former creates from what they know. The latter creates from what they do not yet understand and in doing so, becomes something else entirely.
(“The Dreaming Rebel,” Artwork by Toyen)
A Single Stroke Can Hold the Sea
When an artist has undergone this transformation of perception, even the smallest gesture carries extraordinary weight. A single line, a breath of color, a few seconds of film, these can radiate meaning, because they come from a depth of awareness few are trained to reach.
This is the central paradox of art: that something so small can hold so much. That what looks effortless is often the result of years of inner labor.
Toyen, a Czech Surrealist and gender-nonconforming artist, produced paintings, often minimal and dreamlike, which resonate with silence, intimacy, and unsettling psychological space. They didn’t flood the canvas; they left openings, gaps that invited the viewer to participate in the dream. It was in what Toyen withheld that we felt the force of what was being revealed.
“Freedom lies in abstraction. I live in the space between gesture and silence.”
And so we return to the thought at the heart of this piece:
“The true artist is not defined by output, but by a mind reshaped through the search for unseen depths. A single act can carry the gravity of the sea.”
The stroke, the line, the poem , these are not mere objects but they represent the tip of an iceberg. The weight is in what lies beneath.
(Artist Self Portrait by Harrison Love)
The Inner Shift All Artists Recognize
Every artist who has truly given themselves to the work knows this shift. It is not a singular moment, but a gradual, often painful unlearning of speed, of performance, of control. The more we commit to the search, the less we resemble the person who first picked up the brush or pen. Our minds change. Our senses change. We begin to perceive meaning in fragments, silence, gestures. The mundane becomes mythic. The world expands, and with it, our capacity to feel.
This transformation is quiet. It doesn’t announce itself. But others recognize it. They feel it in the gravity of our presence, the subtlety of our work, the integrity in our process. They may not have the words for it, but they sense the sea beneath the surface.
To those who count themselves amongst other artists, I hope you recognize this shift in yourself. If you do, protect it. Nurture it. It is what separates your practice from performance. It is what carries your work beyond the marketplace and into the timeless, echoing space where meaning resides.
You may only create a handful of works in your lifetime. But if they carry that depth , if they come from the reshaped mind, the consecrated perception they achieve the greater goal.
Let your work hold the weight. Accept and embrace the moments of pause, the stillness which comes before moments of great inspiration. Let the unseen, the unexplored, the unknown be your truest guide.
Bibliography & References
Harrison Love
• Quote: “The true artist is not defined by output, but by a mind reshaped through the search for unseen depths. A single act can carry the weight of the sea.”
Leonora Carrington
• Quote: “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my destiny.”
• Source: The Guardian, “Leonora Carrington: the surrealist who refused to be tamed,” 2015.
Amrita Sher-Gil
• Quote: “I am an individual with a deep appreciation for the inner world and a spiritual hunger that drives my art.”
• Source: Sher-Gil’s personal writings, archived interviews via National Gallery of Modern Art, India.
Forough Farrokhzad
• Quote: “I will plant my hands in the garden. I will grow. I know, I know, I know…”
• Source: Poem from Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season (1974, English translation by Sholeh Wolpé).
Toyen (Marie Čermínová)
• Quote: “Freedom lies in abstraction. I live in the space between gesture and silence.”
• Source: Paraphrased from writings and commentary compiled in Toyen: The Dreaming Rebel, ed. Karel Srp.
Etel Adnan
• Quote: “There are things that are not sayable. That’s why we have art.”
• Source: Shifting the Silence by Etel Adnan (Nightboat Books, 2020).
Ana Mendieta
• Quote: “My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that tie me to the universe.”
• Source: Mendieta’s artist statement, 1981.
Maud Sulter
• Quote: “I am in the business of rewriting history.”
• Source: Interview in Make Magazine, 1990.
Hassan Hajjaj
• Quote: “My work plays with contrasts, the surface you see is layered in meaning.”
• Source: Interview with The Guardian, “Hassan Hajjaj: the ‘Andy Warhol of Marrakech,’” 2018.
Harrison Love is Artist and Author of “The Hidden Way,” an award winning illustrated novel inspired by first hand interviews about Amazonian Myths and Folklore. He is also the Founder of the Permaculture Art Gallery STOA. More information about his Art and Writing can be found on www.harrisonlove.com
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