While almost everyone’s New Year’s Resolution list is cluttered with goals about getting in better shape or achieving better financial success, as an artist your list of goals looks a little different. Although you’re a free spirit, you know that structure is important when to comes to consistently following through with your goals. And you’re ambitious, you have a lot of goals you’d love to accomplish this year, so how do you narrow them down? Luckily we’re here to help. Here are some 2022 New Year’s Resolutions for artists.

1) Start that project

Every artist has the one bucket list project you constantly put off. It’s an idea you’re particularly excited about, which puts a lot of pressure on the project. This piece has to be perfect so you keep putting it off until you have “more time” to “focus” on it… but three years later you still haven’t even started. Make 2022 your year to finally get it off the ground. And, instead of focusing on perfectionism, focus instead on bringing the idea to life in a way that would make you happy and proud of the piece.

2) Finish that project

Just like every artist has that bucket list project floating around in the back of their mind, they also have that one project that they’ve been working on intermediately for years. It can be difficult as an artist to find the right place for a project to feel completed, rather than perpetually tinkering with it forever. And this project in particular doesn’t seem to have an end in sight. Set a New Year’s Resolution to make this the year you finally finish that piece.

When it comes to pieces like this, it’s often a mindset that keeps you tinkering on it rather than the project itself needing more work. If that’s the case for you, work on letting that project go and finding a place where you feel satisfied with it. Perhaps bring in some family, friends, or colleagues and ask them for one more round of feedback for the piece. Go through their notes, make any necessary changes, and then add your artist’s signature as a way of symbolically putting a period at the end of the sentence.

3) Learn a New Craft

As a working artist, expanding your skillset will only allow you to gain more opportunities and find new means of inspiration. Think about an area of art that either you’ve always been interested in or that you think your current skillset would translate well. Find some time each week or every few weeks this year to set aside for developing this new skill. If you remain disciplined about it, by the end of 2022 you’ll have an entirely new skill to create your work.

4) Learn a New Technique

Although you’re skilled in your artistic area of choice, perhaps there is a specific technique or approach that you’ve never worked with before. Maybe it’s because the technique has always been too challenging or it could simply be something you weren’t previously interested in. Either way, setting a New Year’s Resolution to expand your skillset within your field of artistic practice is another excellent way of expanding your portfolio.

5) Attend Art Exhibitions

We’re not big fans of setting New Year’s Resolution goals too high. It’s easy to feel guilty if you start to fall off of your goals and then suddenly you’ve dropped your resolutions entirely. So one realistic goal to set for yourself is to attend one art exhibition per month in 2022. You can obviously attend more than that (in fact, we encourage it) but this way you’ll get to experience the work of at least 12 new artists this year. Making sure to consistently attend exhibitions is important not only for your own networking purposes but also because artists are inspired by each other all the time. Perhaps an artist’s exhibition will provide you with some answers you need in your own work.

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