What If You Have Already Fulfilled Your Potential And None Of Us Noticed

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What If 
You Have Already Fulfilled Your Potential
And
None Of Us Noticed- 

I read that the other day and it really resonated with me. It was written by an artist, I'm not sure of his full name. I found one of his pieces of art on one of Hi- Fructose magazines websites.
They only had his first name which was David. He had that quote written across one of his pieces of art. It basically sums up how I feel about my art career. 

I often sleep with my phone by my bed and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and look at whatever messages or comments people have left me. Last night I woke up at 2am and there were these two woman having a conversation on one of my Instagram pictures. One lady put her friend in the comment saying ''I think you would like this'' She was referring to one of my pieces of mixed media art I did. The other lady comments back that she might make it her next tattoo. I had very mixed feeling on the whole thing.On one hand I was flattered because who wouldn't want to see one of there pieces of art made into a tattoo on someone. It a very high compliment to have someone love something you made to the point of having it tattooed on their body. But it was the way they were talking back and forth about it on my picture that bothered me. I felt like can you at least leave a nice compliment to the artist as your discussing your plans of taking one of their pieces of art for yourself, for your own personal use. I mean, I know most of us have done something similar.We see something we like and use it for ourselves without asking the artist or even giving credit to them.

I don't want to come off with a holier then thou attitude  because I've done stuff like that to.
Guess I never knew how it felt till it happened to me. I often see people commenting on other artist on Instagram like Mark Ryden for example, and they say stuff like ''Hey Mark, can Make this into a tattoo.'' Now granted most of these high profile artist never answer back I guess it's just the simple acknowledgement, a node if you will to the artist. I wondered what makes some people think that some artist deserve to be asked if they can use their art and others feel they don't. I've since taken down a lot of pictures and did an overall of a few of my websites. 

The whole situation reminds me of a quote I heard Mab Graves say in a video I saw of her. She said you can paint like a house on fire but if no one knows you exist it doesn't matter. And that is true, and I think as artist it's what we all want. For people to acknowledge us and notice us even if it's just to borrow our work-

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