Artist Note 6/17

Had some thoughts that were keeping me up last night and continue weigh on my mind into the morning. So this note is partly me clearing my thoughts and partly expressing a challenge I have and how that is impacting me as an artist. 

Last evening I posted the drawing 'Attentive Play' publicly featuring Rick Mitchell where he is surrounded by beefy encouragers pleasuring him forcefully. It received degrees of magnitude more attention and praise from the majority of the drawings that I do, but that was entirely expected. The content of the drawing was similar to another drawing I had done in the past. Where a muscly feeder had tied up Santa Claus and force fed him. It was another drawing of mine that was met with an overwhelming response by people in this space and then the response didn't surprise me. I'm happy people enjoy my work, absolutely. There's nothing more gratifying than the art I spend days of my life doing get validation afterwards. But I also can't help but notice the trends and what that means for my art and me as an artist. 

For those who don't know, there are two big reason why I make fat content: 1) Woes regarding relationships in the gainer community 2) Because I was not seeing what I wanted. 

The second one is what is most relevant here. This is by no means shade to other artists, but the majority of gainer artwork that I saw, especially growing up, depicted fat men in situations where they were useless/helpless and being forcibly fattened. They were almost always shown to be submissive and they seldom were into being fattened. It makes sense that this happens, a big part of the appeal of gaining after all is the " loss of control" to hedonism, fatness. food etc etc. And while I can enjoy these sometimes, it is absolutely not my preferred fat content. So I made my own stuff and drew what I wanted to see. While a lot of folks in gainer world enjoy fat bearish men, I would say very comfortably that most folks are not as interested in the depictions of them that I do. They're generally in more wholesome scenes devoid of humiliation or degradation or even teasing for that matter, all of which are extremely popular within this space. And when there is a sexual element they are shown to be more dominant or unbothered if they are in compromising positions. Contrary to most art where the fat men are submissive and afraid/panicking/flustered about being in compromising positions. Again these things can definitely be appealing, but its not my go-to. 

I don't have peer reviewed statistics or polls in front of me, but I'd say with the upmost confidence just based on the type of art out there that what I usually draw is the less popular thing.  I've long sense made my peace with this dynamic. But, when I see art that I am less invested in artistically get this much praise it becomes hard to not feel like I'm wasting my time. Why don't I just spend the majority of my time making what the people clearly want to see? Well the answer is simple. Because if I did then I'd be artistically unfulfilled and I'd burn out and be miserable and unable to draw. But then I am in a position where I'm making what I want knowing full well that the folks around me, a large sum of them, are waiting for me to make what they want to see. And when its contrary to me in so many ways there's just this hard to describe friction that is wearing me down. 

I'll be fine. Just a little exasperated even though I really shouldn't be. I wish things were different in this space but I can't control or help what people are attracted to and what they enjoy so there's no point in getting in a huff about it.  I've always struggled as an artist to get folks to give me feedback, but I can post these drawings and get massive feedback immediately and I long for a day when I get that for works I'm more invested in. But that doesn't seem likely so I just sort of have to sit with that and it's not fun.