On Rejection and the Creative Path to Presence
Listening to the Light
SURRENDER
Medium - Painted by hand intuitively using the iPad Pro
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to feel rejection as a creative.
We pour ourselves into making something deeply personal and vulnerable, then take the risk of sharing it with the world.
Why does it so often lead to suffering?
What is it really about? Why do we feel rejected? And how can we face it, or even use it, as part of a spiritual process?
These are the questions I’ve been quietly turning over in my mind.
It’s difficult to pinpoint one clear experience from my early years, but like most of us growing up, I craved recognition to shape my sense of self.
As a boy, I experienced the opposite of rejection; there was constant encouragement from my parents and grandparents. My close family always made a big deal of my drawings and paintings.
Naturally, I loved the attention. It gave me a sense of creative identity and validation.
And as someone who was shy and didn’t socialise easily, that meant everything.
As we mature, we begin to understand that validation needs to come not from the external, but from an internal source, if we are to be truly at ease.
Carl Jung observed that, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
I can see now that my whole process as an artist, a mirror of my wider journey, has been, step by step, to let go of tying my happiness to the quiet approval of others. To push instead toward finding a deeper validation in the process itself.
Every day, I have to renew my path. To stop trying to control the external world so that it validates who I am.
And let’s be honest, it’s pretty exhausting, don’t you agree? I mean, why does the mind think it can control the whole universe? It’s been perfectly evolving without us for millions of years!
As Michael A. Singer reminds us, "Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life's events should be self-evident."
And yet, no matter how exhausting or humbling it is, the pull to create remains. Even when recognition fades. Even when no one’s watching.
Because at its heart, creativity is not just a performance. It’s a spiritual act. It’s how we stay alive to the mystery of being here at all.
As Brené Brown puts it, “Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.”
I’ve felt that. The restlessness. The low-level frustration when I haven’t made space for something to flow through. When I start to carry around emotions I can’t quite name, simply because I’ve shut the door on expression.
And so, I keep returning. Not to be seen. But to witness. Not to be approved of, but to participate in something deeper.
Letting go of observational work began when I started painting on my iPad. I used to experiment with different painting applications, and in those experiments, I’d be trying out new brushes and just playing with all the different types of marks, layers, and textures I could achieve.
These doodles were fun and particularly freeing for me at a time during a time of personal stress and anxiety. In any case, I kept these secret and carried on painting en plein air. But those private scribbles had already had a big impact on me, and I couldn’t stop connecting the process to those St Ives abstract painters I’d visited all those years ago.
At the time, I was also listening to teachers like Eckhart Tolle, and these were the beginnings of breathing into surrender. I found that, as a parallel, I could start painting intuitively, and the feeling was like nothing before.
To stop controlling felt liberating. Trusting the marks as they appeared on the canvas, and allowing the creative mess to unfold until something deeper started happening. Until the arrangements of elements started to resonate with an inner voice.
It wasn’t observational work anymore, but a response to feelings, memory, and experience. And of course, all those years of traditional training were absolutely necessary for me to be able to refine a balanced composition and create a harmony of marks and colour.
It existed in that in-between space, neither fully abstract nor strictly observational.
As Patrick Heron wrote, “Merely to observe is to subscribe to the heresy of realism; and merely to project a rhythm is to subscribe to the opposite heresy of non-figuration. Great painting lies between the two and performs the functions of both.”
Looking back, I can see that this shift in my process didn’t just change how I paint, it changed how I experience rejection.
I’m no longer painting for others or to sell commercially. There was vulnerability in that choice, and subsequently, a growing sense of resilience.
For the first time, I felt that these paintings were honest, authentic expressions that came from a deeper place in me.
That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy someone’s positive response or compliment. When a viewer connects with something, it still thrills me. Or that I’m never going to sell something I make in the future. But I’m less bothered by rejection now, because it’s no longer about manipulating an outcome to achieve recognition.
It’s more about staying true to the process itself.
I think that if you're feeling rejected, I’d encourage you to see it as part of the ongoing process of finding your creative voice. And whatever that voice is, at some point, you have to turn inward and start listening to it, instead of endlessly scanning the outside world for signs of approval.
The real creative work is not about convincing others, but about deepening your own connection to what moves through you.
And when that connection is real, even rejection begins to lose its weight. It becomes part of the path, not the end of it.