Artists, Writers, and Photographers Have Thick Skin, Until…

Lon Casler Bixby
8 min readJan 7, 2023
Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash

I’m an artist. I’m not a painter and I cannot draw to save my life. But I’m an artist in the fields of writing and photography.

With being an artist, no matter which medium you dabble in, you need to have thick skin — at least outwardly.

What is the definition of thick skin? An ability to keep from getting upset or offended by the things other people say or do.

On the opposite side of a thick-skinned artist is one with thin skin. These are people who are vulnerable, sensitive to criticism, and get easily offended, hurt, and sometimes angry by the smallest rebuff or slight to their work.

In this article, artist, writer, and photographer are all interchangeable, so instead of writing similar sounding paragraphs on each of the different mediums, I’m just going to focus (pun intended) on photography. But feel free to replace the terms photography and photographer with the medium that relates best to you.

I love my photography and I think that it’s very good — both in concept and execution. But I’m also aware that it may not be the best in someone else’s eye. Everybody has an opinion of what they like, dislike, and why. Some viewers will see a piece of my work and absolutely love it, while others may see the same photo and absolutely hate it for…

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Lon Casler Bixby

Professional photographer and published author in various genres: Fiction, Poetry, Humor, Photography, & Comic Books. www.amazon.com/author/loncaslerbixby/