Is There a Greek God Sabotaging Your Art Career
You May Be in an Epic Battle and not Realise it! This Might Help You Gain Control
“Why your real work is still in the basement – and how to bring just enough of it into the light without sacrificing your soul.”
This is an edited transcript of a recent video I shared on my YouTube channel. It’s for artists who’ve kept their real work in the basement for years, and can’t work out why ‘step one’ – a first exhibition, sharing, selling – feels impossible. I call the thing in the way ‘Step Zero’…But what causes the Step Zero in the first place? This might help!
Introduction and Purpose of the Video
In our last video, I promised you a practical, step-by-step whiteboard session to get past Step Zero, and we are absolutely going to do that today. But it might not be in the way you are expecting. I gave it some thought and I realized that there's no point me doing what everyone else is doing and just showing you something that you've already seen or had psychoanalyzed. It doesn't work. You'll be there forever. There's no point even doing a bullet point or a box or something like that. It doesn't work for us—not our type. Highly creative people, forget it.
The Power of Stories for Creative Minds
What does work for us is stories. They embed themselves into our psyche, and I remember these stories forever. That's why I can tell you this one today, and please note, I have embellished it with my own life experience, and you can do that too. The key thing about these old stories in our culture is how you operate with them—how you use them as metaphor, not specifics.
We are all kept in this thinking that, for example, ancient Greek mythology is something to be studied by stuffy old professors in the basement of universities. What nonsense! Honestly, once you start tapping into it, and the metaphor behind all these great ancient mythologies, it's just another planet. It's the planet I live on. It's the planet that guides me. It's ancient wisdom, so come along with me for a ride.
Housekeeping and Recap
We'll do a little bit of housekeeping and recapping initially. There is a free downloadable worksheet for Step Zero and some of the things we've discussed over the last couple of videos. You'll see more details at the end. After that, we'll move on to the story of Apollo and his brother, Dionysus.
Here is a story of Dionysus and Apollo. This is for artists who are struggling to choose how to put work into the world when they're scared of exposing themselves.
The Struggle of Choosing and Artist Block
Let's go a bit deeper on the problem you have of how to get your first exhibition. It seems, from everything I've been reading in your comments, that trying to decide what to choose is the most difficult thing. And it seems there is often no shortage of creative output in your studio for many of you. But we have this problem of knowing our work looks scattered, as if ten different artists have been painting in the studio.
We also know we are scared to drill down and decide on what 'style' of work to just go with. We are scared that if we pick one bunch of things, we are going to be leaving so many other good things behind. Is that the problem? Or we might not even be able to paint anything at all. The classic paralysis that is very common, even with very advanced, accomplished artists. They hit this wall that's called artist block or imposter syndrome. We have it in us, but we just can't make that action to get it out of our hearts. That's when we know we are just not painting the thing we want to paint. It might be that we've got pencil drawings filling our sketchbooks and other scratchings, but not 'real' paintings. We just can't decide.
And we also know, just recapping on this, if we do give it all and it's rejected, where are we going to turn then? It's existential. All these problems we wish we could solve by a magic wand. I used to fantasize that some special gallery wizard would walk into the studio and instantly see the solution, plucking handfuls of works out of our reject bins, calling them genius, and taking them to launch a show—just taking the decision away from us. A lot of this problem is just not being able to decide, and it's part of a very creative person's nature to be like that. It's just a natural thing.
If this was easy to fix, we wouldn't be talking about it here. It's the hardest thing of all. In the last video I put up on Step Zero, I mentioned that even seasoned artists have exactly the same problem. They've been putting work out there for decades, but now they know that work isn't really giving them a thrill, despite the financial success. Who would think that would be a problem? I know many artists, including myself, who've got to this point where we swear, "Never again will I paint to the demands. I'm never doing a commission again," because you're just working out of this different space that's so structured and premeditated. And then boom, you get a call from a gallery or a client buys a work, pays you $10,000, and we do it again and again. Why wouldn't you? And there you are, pulling your hair out because you haven't even gotten off base, and you've lost your way again.
And time is ticking. So much of this wake-up call stuff happens when we're in our later stages of life. It gets more and more loud because we know we can see how many years are left; you can count them. So let's go a bit deeper into some storytelling and images around this problem in the studio. We are going to shift gears and talk about it differently and not as if it's just a logical problem that we've got to solve. It's not solvable through logic. As I said in the last video, this is a lot more serious than you just choosing something like a frock off a rack. It's about picking through the blood, flesh, and bones of your soul. For goodness' sake, we need to be careful here. But we have to do it.
The Sacred Space of Creativity
I want to start by talking about the Temenos, or sacred container, which therapists know very well. A lot of you may be therapists or have been in therapy. It's often referred to as the 'sacred space of trust' inside which a client and a therapist might work. You might call it patient confidentiality, perhaps. In the studio, I call it the 'Corral,' in which I work as if a horsebreaker. I'll give you more information on that in another video; it deserves its own.
The point is to give you a sense that we can't do the most intimate work if it is split open during certain steps of the process. We can't have the whole street coming in and giving their two bob's worth. We will need some outside intervention, absolutely. But let's start first with the intimacy and respect this deserves. We must be careful here. Soul work is often dirty, messy, and it can get very ugly at times. It's not pretty. Violins don't play very much. They sort of play when the muse rocks up.
The Alchemical Process of Art
This is an alchemical process, as I keep harping on about. It's actually quite a bit industrial. There's a lot of waste and mess. We start with raw materials that have no worth or value. Remember, we start with what no one values, and we're attempting to create gold through this secret process of concentration and focus. This is not a group activity.
But remember, there is this very important paradox, and this is why it gets confusing. We have to learn to hold these tensions. Everything isn't black and white in this department. So the paradox is that we will be needing outside intervention at a certain point in this process. Don't forget the baker's analogy that I referred to in my earlier videos, where I pointed out that we are not the bread or loaves; we are the bakers who make the bread or loaves.
The analogy I used is that your 'style' or your 'brand' in your art is simply a loaf of bread that you create. It's not your voice. You are in charge of the process. The bread is not in charge of you. Your style should not be running your life. Some of your recipes will be more popular than others. Often your favorites might not be so popular, but there are some special clients and buyers who love those special pieces that you love. We have to learn, as exhibiting and selling artists, to understand this balance and to keep our expectations in line with reality. The bulk of your buyers will not be lined up with what you like necessarily, right in the core of your heart.
It's not a judgment if the bulk of the work that the public likes is not your deepest treasure. The bulk of the world is a rather shallow bunch. I don't think that will surprise many of you. I always had my especially complex clients who would come along and buy my 'more difficult' paintings. Sometimes it would take five years. The other ones would sell on the exhibition opening, but it took longer, and I might discount them because they were special clients. They just take longer to sell. It didn't mean they were no good. I guess because I've been in the industry a long time, I carried out that experiment, and I got to see the end result. And I'm assuring you that you don't have to worry if you put on a show and something is rejected. It's not the end of the world. It's just that you didn't find the right buyer.
This is just reality. The full reality, emotions and all.
Okay, so let's get back to the studio. As I've always said, we are alchemical bakers, but someone has to eat this stuff. We are not just making it for no reason, even though sometimes we think we are just making it because we need to express. That's not the truth. Why bake any bread—make the art—if no one's going to eat it? What's the point? So here we are, just trying to work out which of our ingredients are too potent for the world and might poison them, and what might please their palate. That's what this is about.
The Paradox of Sharing Art
So while the Temenos is a closed room, we still have to source our materials from the outside world. Let's get this clear. There are some things we do share with the world, like oxygen, ideas, emotions, pain, joy, and water. So let's ask: why are you even trying to do this if you have no desire to share your work? This is the paradox, and it's all about timing. All cooking involves careful steps, timing, and just the right measures of the ingredients—knowing when to do certain processes. We are not little islands, and yet we have to learn to do certain hard things alone. There are some things that we must decide to do for ourselves and not ask for permission to keep doing them.
Look, we've got to be dogged about this, even obsessive. But we can't be like that until we convince ourselves we are going to do this thing. We can do hard things. Yes, we can. This is about turning our laser focus on this thing and realizing it's okay to move forward and all is not lost if we leave some of our best parts safely in the studio, in our sketchbook or drawer or whatever.
Just get this clear, guys. You don't, and you should never, give it all. Never do that. All eggs should never be in this one bold and brave basket of goodies that you are now preparing for public display. You've got to keep some in the pantry. Now that you know that, you can rest and be at ease, knowing that your treasure is safe and you've got tons more in the vault for later.
First, we've just got to test the water. And you know what? It's probably a fact that if you did give all that you have to the world, they wouldn't even know what to do with it. You would overwhelm them. The bulk of the world, including your prospective buyers, are actually quite simple, totally overwhelmed themselves in their own lives. What they need in your work is not your amazing complexity and depth. They need an escape from their own. And your artwork will and can give them that. That's what they want.
You can stop them in their tracks. When they look at your 10 or 15 works on the wall and they're all singing in harmony, that will give them enough sensual visual information surrounding them that they'll be moved into that place your work takes them. It's a kind of hypnosis. You give them that story that's different, that shifts them. And if you overwhelm them, honestly, their automatic reaction is just to ignore it. That's how humans cope with being overwhelmed. It's just too much stuff, right? You just turn off.
Remember, your own state of paralysis is caused by a degree of this overwhelm. You have your entire soul's journey wound around and through your unshown works. That's an epic amount of complexity. You would never give that out or even try. That's what you intuitively already know, isn't it? So why are you thinking that you have to dish up everything that's inside you? You don't. That's probably why you're thinking, "If I put what I have out there, no one's going to get it. What's the point?" Or, "I've got so many aspects to my story or my creativity, I just don't know what to put forward." And that's actually when we freeze. It's decision paralysis.
What you have in your soul closet and why you are protecting it has good reason to be there and to be protected. That's your own secret path to the universe. It's not meant to be dished up as a product. Remember, the market and your internal, sacred creative space are just not the same. They don't live in the same worlds.
The Myth of Dionysus and Apollo
I like to tell this story from the Greek myth of Dionysus. The god of wine, dance, and song is a crazy boy-god who loved to party and hang out with mad women, boozing and all that stuff. Total heathen, full-on creative genius, but always very raw. In its raw form. I guess electricity in a lightning bolt as opposed to a nice, safe cable coming into your light bulb. That's what I mean by raw. That's our wildness. That's where the lava comes from. That's what I mean about the raw materials in soul-making being like a pretty ugly business at times. It's a pretty grotty thing.
So what's wrong with 'raw'? The problem with that is nothing productive comes from it, really. You might blow a tree up with a bolt of lightning, but you can't harness it. And when you have it coming out through your psyche, it can actually get you in the madhouse. There are probably many of you out there that have been diagnosed with mental disorders because you've accidentally shown it. Unless you harness it, is the key. They tried to get me when I was young, but I kept slipping out of their hands. I'm mad, crazy as a nutter, but I also knew something else from a very young age.
Okay, that's the key here. And I'm just going to drop a hint as to what my 'corral' and the 'horsebreaker' is about, but as I said, that's for another video.
Now, let's be honest, the modern world that we live in is terrified of that raw energy. When they see it in someone, its first instinct is to pathologize it. If you're having mental issues, depressed, or you know, can't get yourself out of a rut—I'm not making fun of it, I've been there—but what they want to do is control it. They want to get it under control. They can't go with the flow. They want to label it and numb it, because our culture, our Western culture, our medical culture has forgotten.
In a healthy, intelligent society where the human condition was better understood—back in the old Mycenaean Greek days, oh, what would that be, about 1500 BC, back when we still had a brain—that's where we could work this out. That's where there was a sensibility around this. So 1500 BC, roughly. Let's talk about Dionysus. Dionysus had a half-brother, Apollo. And both of them were sons of Zeus, of course, because Zeus got around; he was into everything. The relatives or relational dynamics in those stories were never random, by the way. There were always things that matched up. For those of you who don't know, Apollo was, of course, kind of the opposite in nature to Dionysus. It's always about this balancing of the opposites in the best stories.
Now, there are many things about Apollo. Some call him the god of the sun, the upper world, sensible, logical, not crazy, the rule of law, pulls things into order, the good guy, the man of the intellect. Take your pick. Let's not get bogged down on that. You get the idea. Let's just use the most important point on how these two opposite-natured chaps work together. So we'll settle on Apollo being the dude in charge of all the things that are organized up here in the upper world. You know: culture, law, society, all ticking along nicely through cooperation and us all wanting to just get along. He's the organizing agent.
Whereas our mad genius Dionysus, he's the crazy artist who can't really contain himself at times. He doesn't even call himself an artist. He wants nothing to do with that kind of talk. He drinks too much, smokes if he wants, eats what he likes, slaps paint around in his cave if he feels like it. He's got naked wenches draped everywhere. You get the picture. He doesn't really give a shit about what you think of his 'brain farts,' let alone calling it 'art'. He really does not give a shit about any of it. Any of those labels. Not interested. Doesn't have any desire to get ahead in his career. He's just having a good time.
The Relationship Between Dionysus and Apollo
So that's when we give some thought to what Apollo does. Remember that these two need each other. Sometimes things get out of whack, and these two hate each other's guts, and they won't talk to each other for a long time, to both of their detriment. The whole thing is quite abusive. It's a love-hate thing. Mostly they can't work together until they grow up a bit and stop judging each other and work together because they are so vastly different from each other. They eventually come to see that, you know, vive la différence. One man's trash is another man's treasure. What you don't like, the other guy will take care of for you. So, you know, stop putting him down. That kind of thing just comes to us with maturity.
They are brothers. The funny thing is Dion, as Apollo affectionately calls him, basically farts and genius lands on the canvas, but he really doesn't care or even see it. It's just what he does. But as for our Apollo, he plans everything he does. He has everything in order. How else can he organize the upper world? Everything has a place, and there's a place for everything. He can't stand the pointlessness of Dion's heathen life at times.
However, it was Apollo that named his brother's explosions on canvas as 'art' instead of 'madness,' which is what everyone else in the neighborhood said it was. Prior to that, Dion didn't pay much attention to any of them. As I said, they were so abundant, he just called them farts. To him, they were better out than in. So in a nutshell, the metaphor here, if you didn't pick up on it already, is that the Apollonian aspect of our archetypal world gives a rational container to our Dionysus madness. You know, an art gallery, an art show, is Apollo cleaning up Dion's act and making it look like something 'in its proper place' for the upper world to see.
Now back to the whole point of our earthly problem: how to get a show, your first show, or just a new kind of exhibition if you're the seasoned artist who's become bored and jaded. You keep wondering, "Why the blazes can't I get past this Step Zero? Why can't I get my pots and pans together?" So as I tell you this story in a bit more depth, just remember it's a story about you. And all the players in this show are both parts of you. We've got these two opposites that are clashing with each other and judging each other, and that's what's causing a lot of the confusion you're experiencing.
When you are confused and unsure of yourself, you are captured by one of the other brothers. It's either Dionysus lingering in every corner telling you, "Give up. Stop trying to make something of your arty farts. And who cares about the world out there? It's all boring crap. Come over here, you know, let's party, baby! Here, grab this bottle of plonk and take a good swig. Let's have some fun and chill out. Hey, turn the music up!"
Or are you captured by Apollo? And in that instance, he tells you to stop being so absolutely ridiculous. "It's all nonsense. Get in the real world. Sheesh. Some of us around here have things to do, like bills to pay. Just get on with it and work hard and do something that you can be sure of. Something kind of nine-to-five with weekends off and good holiday pay. Let's play it safe. After all, you'll get a good pension and have lots of superannuation stacked up for when you can really relax when you retire—later."
The Creative Process in the Studio
Now, what really happens when the passageway is open between these two, Apollo and Dionysus, and things are working well is something great. Let's get on with this story.
So here we have Apollo. He stands once again, reluctantly, outside Dion's cave, arms folded, frowning, thinking, "For fuck's sake, what am I doing here again? I'm busy. I've got kids to feed, bills to pay, and God knows what will happen if anyone sees me hanging around outside this loser's cave." He bangs louder on the door. "Dion, open up! Come on, I know you're in there. If you don't let me in there to pick something to show the world, I'm going to have to shut my gallery and go and sell car parts. Let me in!"
Dion is a sulky bugger and usually just ignores the phone. Showers only when it rains, is oblivious to the bangs on the door, and never pays his bills. He just dances like a maniac when his favorite songs come on. He eats tasty things, drinks anything that dissolves teeth, smashes out wild creations accidentally, and has no clocks. Apollo infuriates him. Full of hurry-hurry, pressure-pressure, do-it-do-it, blah, blah, blah.
The trouble is, just living in the dark, candle-lit cave—despite the wonder of taking care of the marvelous, fertile realms of drama, madness, ecstasy and all that jazz—living without opening the door to his sunny, but oh-so-sterile brother Apollo now and again causes Dion a fair bit of depression. He suffers quite terribly from SAD, you know, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Apollo is the god of the sun, after all. Dion needs him. Annoyingly.
Just remember, you are both Apollo and Dionysus.
Dionysus, who is sick and tired of waking up sick and tired, finds that his hangovers are starting to annoy him. But whatever, just pass another bottle. What else is there to do? But when Apollo loses his patience and takes a break from Mr. Creative Madness—"He's nothing but an alcoholic, good for nothing anyway!"—he becomes a stiff, logical, boring fart in the world who lines up all his pens on his desk in a row. He scoffs at the waste of time and space until he starts to feel the great, deep hollow inside of himself.
The Importance of Balancing Creativity and Order
The hard job for you—yes, you out there, I'm talking to you—is to bring these two amazing elements together. Both of them are very valuable. A union of these unique qualities, these archetypal qualities in yourself, is the key. There is so much talking in alchemy about the 'sacred union' of the feminine and masculine archetypal forces. It's sometimes called the Hieros Gamos. Nothing to do with modern stuff about gender, by the way. I won't be digging into that, as we have enough here to work with just imagining these two jokers trying to get together.
So there you are in your studio or your little spare room, looking at all this stuff, all your works, and still not knowing how to choose. So let's go back to how it goes when Dionysus and Apollo work together, despite their opposite nature.
Back to our cave.
So Apollo stands outside the cave, huffing and puffing, and he's still banging on the door, harder and harder, until it flies open. A beam of sunshine showers into and across the dark cave's interior. Oh, piles of paper, canvas, dried-up paint tubes, and crumbled newspaper are everywhere. There's this voluptuous naked woman draped over a red velvet couch. Her arm is hanging ungraciously down to the floor, the neck of a half-empty wine bottle nestled in her relaxed grip. A ginger cat scuttles across the room, spitting at Apollo as it goes. Oh, the stench of turpentine, sour beer, dirty socks, and curry gushes past him, trying to escape through the open door. There's no music, no bird song in here, just the snoring wench on the couch. Apollo waits a second as his eyes adjust to the lack of light. In one corner, he can see the slumped form of his brother, Dion. As Apollo steps to one side, the beam of sun coming from behind him slaps Dionysus. His head rises up sharply, his black curls springing up like Medusa’s snake-hair.
"Whoa... hey bro, what are you doing here?"
Apollo does not answer and walks over to the window that is never open. He yanks aside the dark drapes. Dion leans over and presses play on his 1970s beatbox—mixed hits, ready for a party. He stomps into the bucket of fermenting grapes his feet are soaking in and does a little happy dance, laughing. He scoops a plastic party cup into the juice and holds it out to his brother. "Here, Apo, want some?"
Apollo ignores him. He's now standing at the window, holding up a rather conservative drawing of a woman to the light. He muses in a low, flat tone, "This is nice."
Then a loud crash from the dark corner cuts him off as a filthy bucket of water falls to the floor. Dionysus is leaning back in an old, tattered leather chair with his feet on the table. "Ha ha. Nah, that's crap, bro. Here, give 'em this." He throws it across the room in a Frisbee slice at Apollo's head. Before it even arrives, Apollo feels his low-beating heart skipping in excitement. He gets flashes of red, black, red, black, and catches it before it hits him. Before him is a darkly outlined painting of a woman's profile, her nose way too big and a big slash of red paint where lipstick should be.
Dionysus barks out, still laughing, "It'll bite their noses off!" and takes another swig of wine.
Apollo looks at it, eyebrows raised, and thinks, Hmm...
He does not see chaos. He does not see it amongst Dion's junk and mess. He instantly visualizes it differently. He pulls out a pre-made simple white frame from his bag and puts the messy crap of Dion's joke picture into the frame. And then he imagines it hanging in his art gallery, out there in the world. And he likes it. He could never imagine such a thing or make it. He thinks, The X-Factor.
Dionysus is busy patting the cat on his lap and giggling as his pet rooster walks over his oil paint palettes, putting squawky cadmium yellow footprints all over the canvas on the floor. Apollo calls over, "You got any more like this?"
But Dionysus is busy now, fighting off the cat and pressing the fish bones from his dinner into clay for his next sculpture. "Picasso!" he yells out. "Ha ha ha! Yeah, over there in the bin, bro."
Apollo makes his way to a big empty beer box and leafs through the hundreds of painting projects, shoved in and overflowing, scattered all over the floor amongst chip packets and beer bottles. He manages to find fifteen more with this same feeling, this edgy X-Factor that just... well, it stretches his mind. His orderly mind. He's fascinated. He tries each one in his testing frame, discarding many other great works that he comes across, resisting the urge to take them all, to gobble them all up, for now anyway. So he tries to keep his focus. He knows what to do. He has to get enough to hang together well, to kind of tell a story or give this pattern his world can see for long enough to grasp onto. He knows it will work. He only has to give them this sense of value—the value of the madman. The part they can handle. They don't have to meet him. He knows none of these buyers would ever want Dionysus in their beautiful contemporary homes. Oh no. But this? Yes indeed. In a frame, it is par excellence.
He looks for his brother, who has now disappeared into the back room. He really doesn't care, Apollo thinks. He just wants to be left alone with his music and creative stuff.
Anyway, Apollo has to get back. He has what he needs. He pushes open the door in the back of the cave where Dionysus disappeared and is blasted backwards by the thumping beat: "...as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there's nothing left." Coolio’s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, he notes to himself. Yes, I quite like that myself, he thinks, kind of.
Dionysus can't even hear the roaring music. He has a chainsaw in his hand, and he's carving a statue of an angel out of an olive tree.
Apollo sighs, feeling a slight headache coming on, and decides to just go. He leaves out the back door, tripping over a mermaid's tail as it flaps out of the fish pond where Dion keeps his crocodiles. He'll be glad to get back to his nice, clean apartment and can't wait to hang these works in his downtown, beautiful, minimalistic white art gallery. He knows it will thrill his buyers and these works will sell out in days.
Sometimes he wishes he didn't have to go into Dion's world and that mess. After all, he has everything he could want in his own world. Perfect coffee and croissants. A good income, a nice wife, kids, a flash car. But he does not have the wild man. He could never make the wild man live there. And the wild man is why Apollo's art gallery is the most successful one in the city.
If Apollo did not come to see Dionysus, dodging his hissing ginger cats and cocky roosters and picking through his beer boxes, Dionysus would not bother to do anything but drink more beer and wine. If Apollo did not trip over his brother's drunken maenads and mermaids and have masterpieces of lava tossed at his head like spears, Dionysus would not ever pick up a tool again. Apollo is the light Dion needs to aim for, and Dion is the wilderness that sets Apollo aside as a man with an impeccable, unique vision for the X-factor.
Wrap up
This story is an indulgence to show you that there were, and still are, rich cultural stories in our history that can help you understand your confusion about all this. We live in a world that is far too stupid for my liking, mostly. It's shallow. It can be really dumb about how the psyche works, especially that of highly creative people like you.
Once again, I've avoided telling you 'how to do it.' Instead, I've given you a crazy, half-made-up story using my version of Greek gods, even though I think I've got the metaphors right.
So when you go back to your studio today, don't just see a mess. See a cave. Ask yourself, which part of me is Apollo, and which is Dionysus? And how can I get them to finally talk to each other and respect each other?
Conclusion and Free Downloadable Worksheet
If you are still here, there is a free downloadable worksheet, which I did promise, even though this video took a different turn. Click on the link that says "Step Zero Free Download." If the link's not there for some reason, go to my website, www.soulmaking.com.au. It'll be in the menu.
~ Helen - 8 December 2025
“If this lands in your bones and you’re ready to move from reflection into action, I’ve created a free mini-workshop and worksheet to walk you through Step Zero and into your first body of work. You can find it here ➜ [LINK].”