One day when I was a young university student in France, my classmate from England got into an argument with my professor about the meaning of the word "ambitieux" (easy translation = ambition). My professor insisted that in the French language, the term was unequivocally derogatory. But my classmate refused to accept that it could be wholly negative in connotation; the professor must be wrong or biased. How could an entire culture condemn the notion of ambition altogether?

I have never been shy about my ambitious nature. Since I was a little kid, I have embraced it wholeheartedly. I am undoubtedly a type A personality, and have always been an insatiable workaholic. For me, a "balanced" life has always seemed over-rated, an unnecessary and suffocating blend of unworthy compromise and self-imposed mediocrity. Would it not be more fulfilling and meaningful to strive to be the best at something important to you rather than to be merely content in a well-rounded life? A little hard-core, I admit. But throughout my life, I have been not-so-humbly guided by this desire to be the best or to at least be surrounded by the best with all the challenge, inspiration and motivation that comes with such company. Is there any wonder my dream was to live in New York city?

Satisfying my ambition was pretty straightforward during those years when I was in school and then climbing the corporate ladder. There was no doubt when success had been achieved. It was the straight A report card, the scholarships and awards. It was the fancy office, the hefty paycheque, the impressive job title, the prestigious employer.

But now, as an artist only a couple of years out of school, my ambitious nature is struggling to be reconciled with my creative impulses. It's not that the art market doesn't offer it's own version of corporate success: get good gallery representation, sell work at increasingly higher prices to increasingly more important collectors, exhibit work outside your local market, and with any luck be granted awards from prestigious private and public competitions. By all these accounts, I haven't been doing too badly.

But those professional rewards really only serve to help me finance my practice and have my work seen. Not that I'm discounting the importance of this, but I am quickly realizing that in art, success is not so simple. The professional rewards that I have been working so hard to achieve have had no correlation to the confidence and satisfaction I have in the work itself. In fact sometimes, they are completely at odds with each other, when work that I am most proud of gets the least attention, while a piece that feels less me and less interesting becomes everyone's new favorite. When the art-making process is inherently full of so much self-doubt, it is too easy to welcome the reassuring validation of external rewards. Yet it is an insidious and dangerous response that can quickly lead you astray, down a path of turning your artwork into metaphorical widgets -- or on the flip side, of turning market rejection into a definitive pronouncement on the poverty of your ideas.

I can't kill that corporate type A side of my personality. I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with it. But perhaps the French are right. Perhaps ambition never leads to the most innovative, productive or meaningful outcomes, perhaps the underlying drive of ambition is just the empty pursuit of handshakes and hugs. So I am learning to hold its influence at bay and focus my drive on the pursuit of the goal that ultimately matters most to me -- to make the art that I feel speaks most powerfully to my own vision and sensibilities and to the great art that inspired me to become an artist in the first place. Money, market and resume, be damned.