It’s never too late. It’s just work.
Reading Sally Mann’s Art Work as a frustrated artist
Sally Mann’s most excellent book Art Work says it is for young artists, although I can’t help but wonder whether I would have listened to its advice had I read it as my younger self. Perhaps that’s why I’m not an accomplished artist in the first place?
As an older, frustrated artist I found myself wishing I had stuck with my artistic dreams 30 years ago. But reading the book, I realise it is never too late to start, and that we all have to make time to be an artist. Most aspiring artists have to juggle work, family and finances, and still make art, and it is into this that Sally inserts her story. The book is, after all, called Art Work. It’s work. It’s hard. It takes passion and perseverance.
It also gives hope that you can find your own, ever-changing voice.
Some of the stories and metaphors didn’t resonate with me. In part, I think, that is because they are her personal experience, and she emphasises that this is the key: it is your art, your story. But for the most part I kept saying yes, that’s right.
The use of typed letters from herself to friends heightens the lessons, and demonstrates that Sally is just as subject to self doubt and hubris as the rest of us. On rejection a young Sally Mann writes:
“…I wonder where I will finally end, stopped like a heart gasping maybe, maybe just stopped.”
They add to the authenticity, sometimes visceral, sometimes funny, sometimes filled with the righteous anger of the young. They also make one yearn for a time where not everything was in messages and email. Don’t be surprised if you rush out and by a notebook and pen.
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The book had me wishing I had not thrown out my writing, my angst poems, my art, my photos, my failures. That I had instead let them sit, and revisited them as part of my growth. And who knows, in retrospect some of them may have been OK.
It also had me reflecting on the creative life: that it is as much a part of ordinary life as it is divine inspiration. That successful artists live the mundane and the personal drama as much as the rest of us.
But the chapter that spoke to me the most, perhaps because of the time I read it, was the last half of the second last chapter “Challenging Work” where Sally reflects back on good intentions and privilege.
“In hindsight, any of you could have told my naive, earnest (you’re right: dumbass) self that it was a lot more than just problematic. You would have know that historically marginalised people would rather tell their own stories, not have them interpreted through White eyes and minds.”
The chapter allows her and us to ask the question, do I have the permission to tell that story, and even if I do, can I in this day, in this moment? A reminder that all work takes place in a time and space and that perspectives and understandings move.
Oh, and successful artists make mistakes. They take bad pictures, make foolish decisions, ignore good advice and wish they had done otherwise. But they also persevere, and sometimes they find that perfect moment that lifts their soul.
To anyone who wishes they had followed the creative spark within, who is following it, or who simply wants to understand it: read the book.
Make notes as you do. Sketch, whittle, weld, do your creative thing, whatever it is. Hide it at first if you must, but go and do it. If you do, like me, you will be saying thank you, Sally.
Art Work: On the creative life. Sally Mann. Particular Books an imprint of Penguin Books. 2025. ISBN 9780241774540
