Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

Any work you take seriously asks you to believe in it before anyone else does, and often instead of anyone else. The belief is the engine; approval is only weather. If you let the response of a room decide what you make next, you will end up making the room’s work rather than your own. Conviction is not stubbornness. It is knowing what you are after well enough that a shrug cannot redirect you.

Find one thing you are making where you have been adjusting for an imagined audience. Take the next step in it as though no one will see it, then decide separately whether to show it.