An Artist's Non-Apology: I'm Sorry For All Of The Bad Art I Ever Made...But Not Really

Sorry/Not Sorry

By Christine Sloan Stoddard

I'm sorry for all of the "bad" art I ever made, and will continue to make, since not everything can be a masterpiece. Except not really. I'm not actually sorry. First of all, I'm not sorry just on principle. I apologize too much as it is. Most women and other marginalized people do. We are constantly made to feel smaller and less than, and, dammit, I want to take up space. If I take up space by making "bad" art—shitty poems and shitty videos and shitty comics—so be it. I won't back down from occupying the space I deserve. I won't back down from speaking up.

​White men get to make what they make. Whether they toil away in obscurity or get the fame and fortune they feel they deserve, they still get to do it. I want to do it, too. And I want to do it without being grilled about when I'm "giving up" on art and having a baby, what my husband does for a living to "support" my art habit (always the implication), or being compared to other female artists simply because they are female. Women artists are not interchangeable. "All women's art is the same." Not true. What is true across the board? Our right to exist.

There are men whose female partners support them while they make their art. I'll never forget the few I had as professors. Some of them relied on their wives for years before they became full-time professors; others were still adjuncts who relied on their wives to pay the bills. Nobody implied that they were overly dependent or doing something frivolous while their partners brought home the bacon. That's because these men were so-called "geniuses." Their wives should support their brilliance. Isn't that what wives are supposed to do? Support, champion, care, nurse, alleviate? In the inverse situation, the female artist-wife would be seen as a leech or a party girl or a dreamer who cannot be taken seriously. She will grow up when she has a baby. Then she will fulfill her role as wife and mother. Then she will accept her place in society.

I am not sorry that I see the double standard and take issue with it, just like I'm sorry for all of my bad art.

To be clear, I'm not referring to any particular work of art I've made, whether in the present, past, or future. I'm still not sorry, regardless of the timeframe. I'm not ingratiating myself to anyone anymore, ever. I'm not stuttering and speaking in a little girl voice out of shame. I'm not explaining myself and my work to the kind of men who refuse to understand, the kind of men who use interrogation as a performative method. You want to be a know-it-all, bad boy? That's nice. I wish you'd put more energy toward your art. I'm not sorry that I am making art and that you are not. I am not sorry that my "career" (whatever that fuck that may be) is going places that your career is not. I am not sorry that I am expressing myself.

That is the key point: I will not apologize for my self-expression. If that makes me a bad girl, I don't want to be a good girl. Screw good and bad. They're not real, anyway. They are as subjective as art. And did you get the memo? I'm not sorry for my art, which, by the way, is very real. It is here and it's here to stay as long as I'm around. Sorry/not sorry.
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​Of course, I am sorry for other things. I am not beyond apologizing. It's important to recognize mistakes and genuinely work to rectify them (duh.) But I am never, ever sorry for my art—bad, cheap, tacky, sentimental, or otherwise. Who are you to judge? We are all art critics.