Measuring Success

The problem with success is that it never lasts.

Until this past March, success was something that happened to someone else. I had moments of joy, of course, like being part of juried competitions in Richmond and Norfolk. But I never expected to experience the kind of success I enjoyed during my March 2026 exhibition. It arrived at exactly the right moment and caught me so completely by surprise that I can't seem to stop writing about it.

Maybe that's the problem.

I wasn't prepared for the rush of sales during the exhibit. When that giddy flush of success arrived, I thought, Oh. This is my life now. There’s an audience for the work that I do and they’ve found me at last.

Oh, dear, sweet Pollyanna.

If only.

That's not how it works.

When I was a young artist, when I was full of myself, when I cut my hair with a beard trimmer and pranced about in vintage dresses and purple Doc Martens, I measured success differently. Or maybe memory has softened the edges. But I remember success feeling more like adventure than achievement. It was about making the work, earning the respect of peers, finding your people. It certainly wasn't about the number of followers you had on Instagram.

Of course it wasn't.

We still had answering machines and landlines.

Which reminds me of a story.

A little over three years ago, I was preparing for a group exhibition with five other artists with whom I shared a large studio. We had the option of choosing our own title or selecting one from a long list of loathsome puns that had been compiled years earlier by committee.

I suggested something like Six Hearts. One of my studio mates objected. They had been in a similarly named exhibition the year before, and using a title anything like it would, they said, “confuse my followers."

I let it go.

Later, after curiosity reached a fevered pitch, I looked to see just how many hundreds of thousands of followers might be confused.

It was a very low four figures. I mean we’re talking just tipping into the realm of four figures.

I wish I hadn't assumed my studio mate understood something I didn't. I wish I hadn't mistaken confidence for expertise or my own uncertainty for ignorance. Most of all, I wish I'd politely disagreed and encouraged the other four artists to choose the title we actually liked.

But I didn't.

And I still wonder: Is this who we are now? Has success become something we measure by follower counts? Is that what it means to be an artist?

I hope not.

I've written before about wanting to sell my work. I do. I want people to live with it, care for it, and value it enough to bring it into their homes.

But I also need another measure of success.

Earlier this week, I found one.

There are many artists at McGuffey whose work I admire. Peter Allen is one of them. I ran into him on Monday and stopped to tell him how much I love his work.

He smiled and said he felt the same way about mine.

It wasn't the polite compliment artists sometimes exchange. He meant it.

I confessed that I was surprised because our work couldn't be more different.

"It's because we're both working with time," he said.

He got it.

He got me.

There's a difference between hearing and listening. There's a difference between looking and seeing.

Peter sees my work.

And that, to me, feels like another way to measure success.