We are the creators of narratives, it is our job to produce stories and to communicate those stories to others. Be it feelings of pleasure, anger, excitement, or a well intended warning, a good creator knows how to produce art that speaks to those for whom the message was intended. But no creator will ever be able to create something for everybody, at least not anymore.

Back in the day, by which I mean mid nineteenth century Europe, when Zara and H&M didn’t exist and a clean pair of untattered cotton trousers was more of a luxury item than a commodity for many people, you could make trousers for everyone. 

Of course you had to measure your customers, so that they’d actually fit the person, but the question of: “Do you maybe have these in salmon red?” had absolutely no chance of existing back then.

Not because the idea of red trousers was too abstract for people to get back then, but because the demand for “trousers” was far from being met. There were no electric sewing machines and fabric was hard to come by. It was only after many technological advancements that the idea of “trousers” became a commodity. And by doing so, the ideas of “red trousers” and “blue trousers” and soon “light khaki skinny-fit jeans” replaced “trousers” as the only available option.

Every time a quicker, cheaper or better way of producing something (the same goes for service) is invented, the product being produced slips a bit more into the oblivion of commodities, making it possible for more and more people to afford to buy it and consequently producing a need for more sophisticated versions of that particular product for those who already had the means to buy it in the first place.

And while there are no real technological advances in painting (at least not compared to bio tech or computers) the basic ideas of supply and demand are the same. 

Art in itself is the apex of what the idea of commodification is to trousers. But while any other form of creation is roughly limited by the means of production on one side and the specific tastes of the consumers on the other, paintings don’t behave like trousers or laptops. Because no work of art is the same as the other. Scarcity is next to infinite (well, it’s one, not counting editions).

With such a limited supply of any one piece, of course there will only be one possible buyer of that particular piece (at a time) so to expect to show your work to everybody and expect all of them to like it is absurd and may just leave you feeling like you’re just not any good at what you do. But all it takes is one person, whose passion and beliefs match that of the art work. 

And with more than 8 billion people currently living on earth and over 3 billion connected to the internet, it’s really not that hard anymore to find that one person. Because the best part is, there isn’t just one in the world, there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them, you just need to take some time and figure out who they are.