In today’s world it is incomparably harder to create something new than it was 100 or 200 years ago. The amount of knowledge one has to have to expand the already present tools and ideas of today’s technology and creative thought is just incomparable to the basic understanding of physics needed by Sir John Harington for inventing the first toilet.

Sure, back then people also knew much less about the nature of physics, chemistry and science in general, but the fact that today you can go online and find all the information you need to learn about a subject, be it bio chemistry or quantum physics, makes it a bit more even in comparison.

Nonetheless, the truth is none of us can become the new Picasso, the guy or gal who “invented” drip painting or the first person to have created a happening. These achievements, if I may borrow from the land of video games, have already been unlocked by players that came long before we even received our user names.

But, while a lot has already been done in art, we still have a constant stream of new artists, painting more or less the same motifs than the old masters; be it realism, abstraction or just a particular use of funky colours.

The main point though, albeit quite similar in style, these new artists have one important thing, that those, that came before them never will: a different story. Regardless if they make similar works like Picasso — if their whole body of work is unique enough, if their story is interesting enough and especially long enough, they can become fresh in the eyes of their peers.

Because the longer the time frame of their careers, the more weight their work caries. They might not be the best artists that ever lived, but they produce constantly, the make an effort to present themselves in a consistent and uniform fashion and they show up to events that matter.

While many of us are trying so hard to invent something new, trying to make our shows into something never seen before, such efforts are almost impossible to do with more than 17.000 years of art that came before us.

And while I do not wish to discourage anyone from exploring the vanguard of artistic creation, there are much more abundant opportunities for all of the artists that like to create more classical or already well known forms of art like impressionist paintings, realist sculptures or abstract works.

There will surely always be inventors and visionaries on the forefronts of creation, battling the status quo between the possible and impossible, the socially acceptable and unacceptable. But while these are exceptional feats of both the body and the mind, there will always be an abundance of space for all of those, who just wish to crate, rather than explore. The only important thing is to stay consistent and show up to work every day.