Hi !
This is a really good question. It’s one I’m very ill-qualified to answer.
If you want my best guess, I think there’s two factors you need to take into consideration. One is what you want your art to do, and the other is what you want to do as an artist.
You’ll get more useful advice from a successful artist who cultivates their audience. I’m not and I don’t. I’ve put the rest of my answer under the cut, or alternatively, here’s a drawing of a frog.
If you want your art to be political or educational, if you’re an activist, if you want to help shift the values of your society, if you want your work to form part of a wider cultural conversation, whether fun or serious – then yeah, you probably need to pay attention to how it’s landing with your audience. It’s not a conversation if you’re not listening.
And if, as an artist, you want to get eyes on your work in order to build a reputation, gain a following, make sales, get the attention or respect of peers in your field or become well known-enough that critics engage with your work – that is, if you want to take your place in the cultural landscape and actually develop a career as an artist in the true sense of occupying a role in society (as opposed to merely having the financial freedom to stay home and draw all day) – then again, yes, you will need to actually care about how your work is perceived and think critically about how to respond to those perceptions.
As to the finer points of *how* you should engage, I couldn’t begin to tell you, because I don’t care about any of those things. I only make things because my brain is constantly on fire.
Even if I wanted to care, I don’t feel I have time. My main concerns are to develop the technical skill, the self-discipline, and the creative imagination to someday make the kind of complex, eloquent images I dream of making, in order to express things I have no other outlet for, and a single lifetime doesn’t seem long enough for me to develop those things to my own satisfaction. In fact, I think being in any way influenced by what people think would be actively detrimental to my goals.
It’s still nice when something I made resonates with someone, even if it’s more or less by accident, so thank you for the kind words.
There’s a non-zero chance I will delete this pretty soon so I hope you get this @executivedoughnut and I hope you make stuff you feel good about making.