PATREON or how to make a life as a creative

One day my dad told me, ‘they don’t realise how much you throw yourself into your art and your own little things…’, with they being acquaintances, friends and even family members. He was right then and would still be now. I know the people who truly know me are just a handful and those who accept and support me to be just the person I am are even fewer. But that’s ok. 

I don’t know why I’m mentioning this here… it may seem like it doesn’t make much sense, like I don’t make much sense most of the time. But it does. Because my dad was my number one supporter and he passed away over six years ago, and it is still a tragedy today. Still – because even though time has passed and keeps passing by, and even though I have grown and kept living, I often feel terribly alone, even when I am not, and I often feel like there’s never going to be anyone who’ll believe in me like he used to. 

Losing him has been a tragedy. But it hasn’t been the only thing that made life so difficult to bear in the following years. I’m not going to extensively mention the sexual assaults I experienced and all the lies I’ve been told, and all the things that led me to a slow death, anorexia and my still complicated relationship with food and my body. I’ve been over this, page by page, in my hybrid poetry book, Résilience. I’ve known death, trauma, fear, and anxiety, but I’m still here, and that must mean something. So, I keep going, following in the footsteps of my dad and of the most important thing he told me – life isn’t worth living if you don’t live it with passion.

I make risky bets; I leave everything behind again and again until I find where I belong – until I am with the right people in the right place, doing the right things for me. I haven’t found this yet. Never fully, at least. But I believe I’ve found stones on the way that are leading me to it. I always try once more and attempt to be better and more like myself, learning lessons from past mishaps and mistakes. I’ve taken the time… especially since I left hospital… time and time again, to think about what I wish to fill my life with, what makes me thrive and grow and feel upbeat and peaceful. I’ve taken the necessary time, and whichever way I look at things, I only see one way for me. One path that makes me flourish every time, and it is that of a creative. 

As the adage goes, it’s not easy to make it as an artist, to earn any money from being a painter, a poet, or a photographer… Well, I don’t believe that to be entirely true because I think you can make it as an artist. You can have people interested in your art and willing to pay for it. You can make it, but only if you’re given the chance to create it in the first place, to truly be with your art, to live, eat and sleep with it, and eventually become a master at it. So, you see, this is where troubles hit for a creative; it’s in those stages of making art. Troubles hit all of us who are not given the chance to really be and breathe with their creations; they hit all of us who give so much of themselves yet don’t get anything in return, all of us who life throws its lot of greater concerns at and forces to give up on the good stuff – our stuff, the stuff that makes us itch and that is our art. Hence, it’s not so much that it’s not easy to make it as an artist, it’s rather that it’s not easy to live and make a life being an artist. Because for some reason I don’t quite understand the whole spectrum of, it isn’t given the value it should. And so, I think it is brave to make this choice, to try to make a life being an artist, to choose a meaningful and fulfilling existence, and leave unhealthy and destructive jobs and patterns behind. 

That’s what I’ve also chosen to do. I’ve quit everything and taken risks to reshape a life that I hope I can make. And that is why I created my Patreon page. Of course, there are other, more mainstream places to showcase my work… I mean of course Instagram is nice, but let’s be honest here… Unlike what they’re trying to make you believe, it’s not as safe as it looks - I mean, how many times do I receive inappropriate messages and images, and how many times do people mistake my self-portraits for pornography, how many times do some almost incite to prostitution? How many times, do you think? To be honest… too many to count. Instagram is also restrictive and abusive and unfair – it censors irrelevantly, sometimes becomes a burden with the rules of the game changing at the drop of a hat, and most importantly, it doesn’t pay its artists. And by that, I mean the true creatives, not the ones who pay to get hits on crappy content. But hey, it’s probably one of the most – if not the most – influential marketing tool on the market. 

I put a lot of energy and time into all the photo series I create, into every poem I write, and every illustration I make. And unfortunately or not, in this society, time is money. I wish I could live without any money. I don’t like that shit. But what I do like it is to write and draw and capture emotions on rolls of film. I wish everyone could do what they like and make a life and a living out of it. For most of us, that’s not the case. But I believe we can still try to get a little bit of it, to make a little piece of life out of the things that we love doing. Because it’s fair to us and it gives value to all this stuff we throw ourselves into, but more than that, because it’s essential, vital even, for some of the most sensitive minds like mine. Obviously, having no money won’t stop me from creating, but it could sustain me – both my art and myself. So, this is how important it is to me. 

Supporting me on Patreon is supporting my creative practice and my work. But it’s also helping me get my images seen and my poetry read by more people, and elsewhere than in the digital sphere – in galleries and through books for example. And it’s helping me pay for the diverse expenses too, all those I need to cover to make my art – film rolls and development costs, subscriptions to programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop for the digital works, and all the gears and equipment that sometimes require a reparation or an upgrade. 

One day my dad told me, ‘they don’t realise how much you throw yourself into your art and your own little things…’. I realise it will take a lot more than this written piece for people to understand the extent of what my dad meant and become fully aware of what it means to me to make my life as an artist. I believe, though, some will, and the people who know me best already have a good sense of it… I guess I just hope these few words will have made my motives for being on Patreon clearer to you. 

And to get down to it, here’s a recap of what this platform is exactly, how it works, and what I offer in the different tiers of my own page. 

What is Patreon and how does it work? 

We say pictures are worth a thousand words, so I’ll keep it short and let you watch the introduction video below instead. But in a nutshell, Patreon is a membership platform that helps creators get paid, and which is based on the pretty old concept of patronage. 

What will you find on my Patreon? 

People who join me on Patreon get to see my full series uncensored, access exclusive content before anybody else, have sneaky peeks behind the scenes and follow my journey through extracts of my creative journal. All these benefits are subdivided into 5 tiers, unlocking more perks the higher they go. 

> The first tier at €3/month, ‘little drops make the mighty ocean’, is made for anyone who simply wishes to support me shooting and creating; these patrons then have access to all my latest news, uncensored Instagram images and some exclusive ones too, as well as early previews and behind the scenes.  

> The second tier at €8/month, ‘secret garden’, stretches the limits of my personal cocoon and opens a space where I share a lot more of my uncensored visual artworks that didn’t make it to the tiny percentage of images that are in the online public sphere; these patrons get all the benefits from the first tier and access all my complete photo series. 

> The third tier at €16/month, ‘a piece of me with you’, makes way for a far more intimate world, where patrons take a step further and dive into my creations in their entirety – images and words combined. It’s my greatest regret, but modern societies now give very little value and worth to the written words because so many are all about the images… so, as well as all the other benefits from the lower tiers, these patrons access my full bodies of work, i.e., my visual and written poetry – all uncensored and unpublished anywhere else. 

If you have any questions about Patreon or the different memberships I offer, feel free to message me. I can’t wait for this adventure to continue and for this more positive and safer place to thrive and flourish and keep helping me grow as an artist and as a person. 

Join me today!