Staying Motivated as an Artist When Nothing Seems to Work

Every artist hits that wall where nothing feels right. The work looks flat, the ideas dry up, and even picking up a brush feels like a chore. You start wondering if you've lost it, if maybe you were never that good to begin with. The studio that used to be your sanctuary now feels like a space full of unmet expectations and failed attempts. You scroll through other artists' work and feel that familiar tightening in your chest, the one that whispers you're falling behind, that everyone else has figured out something you're missing.

This isn't weakness or lack of talent. It's the reality of a creative life, and learning how to navigate these valleys is what separates artists who keep going from those who don't. The romantic notion of the perpetually inspired artist is a myth that does more harm than good. Real artists have days, weeks, sometimes months where showing up feels more like obligation than joy. They have periods where every piece feels like pushing a boulder uphill. The difference is they've learned that motivation isn't a prerequisite for showing up, it's often the result of it.

The truth is, motivation isn't something you find once and keep forever. It's something you rebuild, sometimes daily, through understanding what drives you and creating systems that support your practice even when inspiration feels miles away. This article isn't about positive thinking or waiting for your muse to return. It's about practical, honest strategies for sustaining a creative practice through the inevitable rough patches, for reconnecting with what matters when everything feels meaningless, and for building the kind of resilience that lets you make art for the long haul rather than burning out in a blaze of unsustainable intensity.

Understanding Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

There are two types of fuel that power your art practice, and knowing which one you're running on makes all the difference. Extrinsic motivation comes from outside you. It's the gallery show, the Instagram likes, the sale, the praise from someone whose opinion matters. These feel great when they happen, but they're unreliable. You can't control when they show up, and chasing them turns your practice into a performance for others. You start second-guessing every decision based on what you think will get a response rather than what genuinely interests you. The work becomes calculated rather than curious.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from inside. It's the satisfaction of solving a compositional problem, the meditative state you enter when you're deep in the work, the curiosity about what happens when you try something new. This is the sustainable fuel. It's always available because it doesn't depend on anyone else's response to what you make. When you're intrinsically motivated, a day in the studio feels worthwhile even if no one ever sees what you made. The process itself is the reward.

Most artists start with intrinsic motivation. You made art as a kid because it was fun, because you were curious, because something inside you needed to make things. There was no audience, no career trajectory, no strategy. You mixed colors just to see what would happen. You drew the same subject over and over because you were fascinated by it. You experimented freely because there was no wrong answer. Then somewhere along the way, external validation crept in and started calling the shots. You began making work to get into shows, to build a following, to prove something to someone. And now when those external rewards don't come, you feel empty.

The shift usually happens gradually. You post something online and it gets a great response, so you make more like it. You get into a show with a certain type of work, so you keep making that type. A collector buys your landscapes, so you stop experimenting with abstraction. Each individual decision makes sense, but collectively they steer you away from your own curiosity and toward what gets results. Before you know it, you're trapped in a cycle where external validation is the only thing that makes the work feel worthwhile, and when it doesn't come, you're lost.

The work here is to reconnect with what made you start in the first place. Not in some nostalgic, romanticized way, but by genuinely asking yourself what aspects of making art still light you up regardless of who sees it or what they think. Maybe it's the physical act of manipulating materials, the way paint moves or clay responds to pressure. Maybe it's the problem-solving aspect, figuring out how to represent something complex or make a composition work. Maybe it's having a space where you get to be completely honest, where you can explore ideas or feelings you can't express anywhere else. Whatever it is, that's your foundation. Everything else is just weather.

One practical way to test this is to make something you have no intention of ever showing anyone. Not as a study or warm-up for real work, but as a complete piece that's purely for you. Notice how it feels different. Notice what choices you make when no one's watching. Often you'll find more freedom, more playfulness, more genuine curiosity. That feeling is what you're trying to protect and cultivate. It's the core of a sustainable practice.

This doesn't mean external validation is bad or that you shouldn't care about shows, sales, or recognition. Those things matter for a career and for feeling like your work connects with others. But they can't be your primary fuel source. They have to be bonuses on top of a practice that already feels meaningful. When you get that balance right, external success enhances your work rather than defining it, and external rejection stings without destroying you.

Reconnecting with Your Artistic Why

When motivation tanks, it's usually because you've lost touch with why you're doing this in the first place. Not the surface reasons like wanting to be successful or respected, but the deeper pull that makes you an artist even when it's hard. Finding that again requires some honest digging, and it often means confronting uncomfortable truths about what you've been doing versus what you actually care about.

Start by thinking back to the last time you felt genuinely excited about your work. Not proud of the result, not validated by someone's response, but excited during the process itself. What were you exploring? What question were you asking? What felt alive about it? Often you'll find themes that run through your most satisfying work, threads of curiosity or concern that show up again and again. Maybe you keep returning to particular subjects, specific formal problems, or certain emotional territories. These patterns aren't accidents. They're clues to what actually drives you beneath all the noise about what you should be making.

Your artistic why isn't always grandiose. It doesn't have to be about changing the world or making important statements, though it can be. For some artists, the why is as simple as needing to process what they see, or enjoying the meditation of repetitive mark-making, or wanting to create beauty in a world that feels chaotic. Some artists are driven by technical curiosity, wanting to master specific skills or push materials to their limits. Others are driven by narrative impulses, needing to tell stories or capture moments. The specific content matters less than the fact that it's genuinely yours, not something you think you should care about because it sounds important or impressive.

One powerful exercise is to imagine you could never show your work to anyone again. Everything you make from now on goes straight into storage, unseen. Would you still make it? If the answer is yes, what would you make and why? This thought experiment strips away all the external pressures and forces you to confront what matters when no one's watching. If the answer is no, that's information too. It means you've been making work primarily for external validation, and you need to find a more sustainable center. That doesn't make you a bad artist, it just means you've gotten off track and need to find your way back.

Another useful approach is to look at when you feel most yourself in your practice. Not when you're making your best work necessarily, but when you're most engaged, most present, most alive to the process. Is it during the messy experimental phase where anything could happen? Is it in the careful refinement stage where you're solving specific problems? Is it in the research and planning before you even start making? Different artists come alive at different stages, and understanding where you're most energized helps you structure your practice to include more of that.

Your why can also evolve, and this is where many artists get stuck. What drove you five years ago might not resonate now, and that's fine. You're allowed to change. The artist making politically charged work might discover they're now more interested in formal experiments with color. The abstract painter might start feeling pulled toward representation. The conceptual artist might want to focus on craft and technical mastery for a while. Fighting against these shifts because of who you think you're supposed to be is a motivation killer. It creates this awful friction where you're forcing yourself to care about something that no longer interests you while feeling guilty about what actually does interest you.

Giving yourself permission to follow new interests doesn't mean abandoning everything you've built. Your skills, your way of seeing, your accumulated knowledge, all of that comes with you. You're just pointing it in a new direction. Some of your audience might not follow, and that's okay. The ones who are actually interested in your work rather than a specific product will stay curious about where you go. And you'll likely attract new people who resonate with this new direction.

Sometimes reconnecting with your why means going back to basics. Spend a week making small studies with no pressure or agenda. Draw from observation. Play with materials. Make something ugly on purpose. Give yourself assignments that have nothing to do with your serious work. This kind of low-stakes making often reveals what you genuinely enjoy versus what you've trained yourself to do. It's like clearing the palate so you can taste things clearly again.

It also helps to articulate your why explicitly, even if just for yourself. Write it down. Say it out loud. Make it concrete. Not as a mission statement or artist statement full of impressive language, but as a simple, honest declaration of what you're after. Something like "I make art because I need to figure out how light works" or "I make art because it's the only place I can be completely honest" or "I make art because I'm fascinated by how much emotion you can convey with just color and shape." When you can name it clearly, you have something to come back to when you're lost.

Creating Meaningful Milestones

One reason motivation fades is that art-making often feels like wandering in the dark with no sense of progress. You're working, but toward what? Unlike many pursuits where advancement is clear and measurable, artistic growth is murky. You can't always tell if you're getting better. Sometimes work you thought was strong looks embarrassing six months later. Sometimes pieces you almost threw away turn out to be breakthroughs. Without clear markers of advancement, it's hard to maintain momentum. You show up, you make things, but there's no feeling of moving forward, just spinning in place.

The solution isn't to set arbitrary goals just for the sake of having goals, but to create milestones that actually mean something to your practice. The key word here is meaningful. A milestone has to matter to you specifically, has to represent real growth or achievement in your practice, not just check a box so you can say you accomplished something.

Meaningful milestones are specific, personal, and focused on your development rather than external outcomes. Instead of "get into a gallery show," which you can't fully control and which might happen because of connections or timing rather than the quality of your work, try "complete a cohesive series of ten pieces exploring a specific theme." This is entirely within your control and represents actual artistic development. Instead of "gain 1,000 followers," which depends on algorithms and trends and tells you nothing about your growth as an artist, try "post about my process weekly for three months and see what I learn about articulating my ideas." The difference is that one is about what you can do, and the other is about what you hope will happen to you.

Break your larger artistic aspirations into smaller achievements you can reach in weeks or months rather than years. If you're working toward a solo show, the intermediate milestones might be finishing five strong pieces, getting feedback from two trusted artists you respect, and documenting your process in a way that helps you understand your own methods. Each of these is substantial enough to feel meaningful but achievable enough to maintain forward motion. You're not just marking time, you're genuinely advancing your practice in ways you can see and measure.

The milestones should stretch you without overwhelming you. If everything feels impossibly hard, you'll give up before you start. If nothing challenges you, you'll get bored and drift away. Finding that sweet spot where you're slightly uncomfortable but not paralyzed is where growth happens. Think of it like lifting weights. Too light and you're wasting time. Too heavy and you'll hurt yourself. Just beyond your current comfort level is perfect.

And celebrating when you hit these markers matters more than you might think. It's easy to immediately move on to the next thing without pausing to acknowledge what you've accomplished. Take a day off. Share it with someone who gets it. Or just spend time looking at what you've done before rushing to the next challenge. This isn't about ego or bragging, it's about letting your brain register that progress happened, that the effort was worthwhile. Without this acknowledgment, everything blurs together into one endless slog with no sense of achievement, which is exactly the feeling that kills motivation.

Time-based milestones can work too, but make them about consistency rather than output. Committing to studio time three days a week for a month is a milestone. So is finishing a daily observational drawing practice for 30 days. These build the infrastructure of your practice, which is often more valuable than any single piece you make. They establish that you're someone who shows up, who honors their commitment to their work, who treats their practice as something worth protecting. This identity shift, from someone who makes art when inspired to someone who is an artist consistently, is huge.

You can also set skill-based milestones. Master a specific technique. Learn to mix a particular range of colors accurately. Develop confidence with a tool or material you've been avoiding. Figure out how to photograph your work well. These concrete skill improvements give you something tangible to work toward and clear feedback about whether you're succeeding. You either can do the thing or you can't yet, which is much clearer than the fuzzy question of whether your work is getting better overall.

One approach that works well for many artists is to structure milestones around exploration and experimentation rather than just completion. Instead of "finish 20 paintings," try "experiment with 10 different approaches to the same subject and evaluate what I learn." This keeps the focus on growth and discovery rather than just production, which often leads to more interesting work and sustained engagement. You're not just cranking out pieces, you're investigating questions that genuinely interest you.

Whatever milestones you set, write them down somewhere you'll see regularly. Not as pressure or obligation, but as gentle reminders of what you're working toward. And be willing to adjust them if they stop serving you. A milestone that made sense three months ago might not fit where you are now, and that's fine. The point isn't rigid adherence to a plan, it's having enough structure to feel like you're moving forward while staying flexible enough to follow genuine interest and growth.

Handling Rejection and Comparison

Nothing kills motivation faster than feeling like you're not measuring up. Someone else got the opportunity you wanted. Their work looks effortless while yours feels labored. They seem to have figured out something you're still struggling with. They're younger than you, or they've been at it for less time, or they seem to have it all together in ways you can't imagine. Social media amplifies this exponentially because you're constantly confronted with everyone else's highlight reel while you're stuck in your messy, uncertain process. You see their finished pieces, their show announcements, their glowing reviews, while you're looking at your own failed attempts and quiet obscurity.

First, understand that comparison is inevitable. You're wired to assess where you stand relative to others. It's how humans navigate social hierarchies and understand their place in the world. Trying to never compare yourself to anyone is like trying to never think about elephants once someone mentions them. The goal isn't to stop comparing but to do it in a way that serves your growth rather than destroying your confidence. There's a difference between noticing someone's skills and using that observation to fuel your own development versus scrolling through Instagram at 2am feeling like a failure because everyone else seems to have their act together.

When you find yourself in comparison mode, get specific about what you're actually envious of. Is it their technical skill? Their conceptual clarity? Their career success? Their seeming ease and confidence? Once you identify the specific thing, you can decide if it's something you actually want to develop or if you're just feeling generally inadequate. Sometimes what looks like envy is actually admiration, and you can use that as a compass pointing toward where you want to grow. If you're envious of someone's color sense, that tells you color is something you value and want to develop. If you're envious of someone's ability to market themselves, that tells you something about what you feel is missing in your own practice.

But often the comparison isn't even about specific qualities. It's just a general feeling of being behind, of not being enough. This is when comparison is most toxic because it's not actually giving you useful information. You're not learning what to develop or where to focus. You're just marinating in inadequacy. When you catch yourself in this state, the best response is usually to step away entirely. Close the app. Leave the gallery. Stop looking at what everyone else is doing and go make something, anything, just to reconnect with your own process.

Rejection stings differently, but it's also information rather than verdict. A gallery pass, a denied grant, a piece that doesn't sell, a show that gets no attendance, a post that gets no engagement, these hurt because they feel like judgments of your worth. But they're usually just mismatches. The gallery has a particular vision and yours doesn't fit right now. The grant reviewers were looking for something specific and your proposal wasn't it. The buyer connected with different work. The algorithm didn't push your post. None of this means your art lacks value. It means this specific opportunity wasn't the right fit at this specific time.

Building resilience to rejection starts with separating your identity from any single outcome. You're not your rejection rate, just like you're not your acceptance rate. You're an artist showing up to do the work regardless of how it's received. That doesn't mean rejection doesn't hurt or that you shouldn't feel disappointed. Of course it hurts. Of course you wanted that opportunity. Of course it's frustrating to put yourself out there and get shut down. The feelings are valid. But they don't have to mean you stop making work or that you were wrong to try.

One practical approach is to normalize rejection by expecting it. Apply to ten opportunities knowing maybe one will work out. Submit to twenty venues understanding that nineteen might say no. When you reframe rejection as a numbers game rather than a personal indictment, it loses some of its power. Professional writers expect their work to be rejected dozens of times before it finds the right home. Actors expect to audition for many roles they won't get. Artists can adopt the same mindset. Each rejection is just part of the process of finding the right fit, not evidence that you're not good enough.

And when acceptances come, they're bonuses rather than validation you desperately need. This distinction matters enormously. If external acceptance is the only thing that makes you feel like a real artist, you're at the mercy of other people's decisions about your worth. But if you already know you're an artist because you show up and do the work, then acceptances are nice acknowledgments but not the source of your identity. They confirm what you already know rather than proving something you doubt.

It also helps to remember that you have no idea what's actually going on with the artists you're comparing yourself to. That person whose career looks perfect might be struggling with crippling self-doubt. That artist who seems so productive might be headed for burnout. That work that looks effortless probably involved countless hours of struggle you never see. Social media and public-facing career highlights show such a tiny slice of reality. Everyone's displaying their best while hiding their worst, which creates a completely distorted picture where everyone else looks successful and together while you feel like a mess.

The artists who sustain long careers aren't necessarily the ones with the most talent or the best opportunities. They're the ones who can handle rejection and comparison without letting it stop them. They feel the sting, acknowledge it, and keep working anyway. They use comparison as information when it's useful and ignore it when it's just noise. They apply for opportunities knowing they'll face more no's than yes's, and they don't take the no's as final judgments. This resilience isn't something you're born with. It's something you build through repeated exposure to rejection and comparison while continuing to show up for your work anyway.

Building a Supportive Creative Community

Trying to maintain motivation in isolation is exponentially harder than doing it with others who understand the struggle. You need people who get it, who won't tell you to just get a real job when things are hard, who can celebrate your wins without diminishing them and commiserate with your losses without making them worse. The romantic image of the solitary artist working alone in their studio might make for good mythology, but the reality is that most artists who sustain long careers do so with the support of other artists who understand what it takes.

A supportive creative community doesn't mean a large network or formal organization. It can be three other artists you check in with monthly. It can be one studio mate who shows up on the same days you do. It can be an online group that shares work in progress and gives thoughtful feedback. The size matters less than the quality of the relationships and the consistency of the connection. A handful of people who genuinely care about your growth and will be honest with you is worth more than a thousand casual acquaintances in the art world.

Look for people who are serious about their practice but not precious about their ego. The most valuable community members are those who can be vulnerable about their struggles while also being genuinely excited about your progress. They're doing their own work rather than spending all their energy talking about making work someday. They offer real feedback instead of just praise, and they can receive feedback without falling apart. They show up consistently rather than appearing and disappearing based on how they're feeling about their own work.

Finding these people requires being willing to be vulnerable yourself. You can't expect others to open up about their struggles if you're always projecting confidence and success. Some of the strongest artistic relationships start with someone admitting they're struggling, that they don't know what they're doing, that they're scared they're wasting their time. That honesty gives others permission to be honest too, and suddenly you're having real conversations instead of just networking.

Building this takes initiative. You can't wait for the perfect community to find you. Reach out to artists whose work resonates with you, not just whose work looks successful. Propose studio visits. Start a critique group. Show up to openings and actually talk to people instead of just looking at the walls and leaving. Most artists are hungry for genuine connection with others who take this seriously, but someone has to make the first move. It feels awkward at first, but so does anything worth doing.

When reaching out, be specific about what you're looking for. Don't just say you want to connect. Propose something concrete. Ask if they'd be interested in trading studio visits once a month. Suggest starting a small critique group. Invite them for coffee to talk about a specific challenge you're both facing. People respond better to clear invitations than vague expressions of interest, and it's easier to say yes to something specific than to some undefined future collaboration.

Online communities can work if they're well-curated and focused. General art groups on social media tend to devolve into either mutual admiration societies where everyone just posts work for likes, or harsh critique spaces where people are more interested in tearing down than building up. Look for groups with clear purposes, active moderation, and members who engage thoughtfully rather than reactively. Smaller groups with application processes or membership requirements tend to have better dynamics than huge open forums where anyone can join.

The right community makes your practice feel less lonely and more sustainable. When you're struggling, knowing others have been there and made it through helps. You realize the doubts you're having aren't evidence that you're not cut out for this, they're normal parts of the process that every artist faces. When you're excited about something, having people who genuinely care amplifies the joy. And when you need accountability, having others who expect you to show up can make the difference between flaking and following through.

But community also requires contribution. You can't just take. You have to be willing to show up for others when they're struggling, to give thoughtful feedback on their work, to celebrate their successes genuinely even when you're feeling jealous or behind. The artists who get the most from community are the ones who give the most to it, who understand that everyone's in this together and that supporting each other makes everyone stronger.

Be strategic about who you let influence you. Not everyone who calls themselves part of a creative community is actually supportive. Some people are competitive in ways that feel toxic. Some are so wrapped up in their own struggles that they can't show up for others. Some give feedback that's more about asserting their own taste than actually helping you grow. It's okay to be selective. You don't owe anyone access to your process or your vulnerability. Build relationships with people who make you want to work harder and believe more in what you're doing, and gracefully distance yourself from people who drain your energy or make you doubt yourself.

The community you need might also change over time. The artists who supported you when you were starting out might not be the right fit when you're more established. The group that worked when you were exploring might not serve you when you're focused on a specific project. This doesn't mean those relationships weren't valuable or that you outgrew those people. It means your needs evolved, and that's natural. Be grateful for what different communities have given you at different times without feeling obligated to stay in relationships that no longer serve your growth.

Renewing Passion When It Fades

Even with all the right systems and support, there will be times when the passion just isn't there. The work feels mechanical. You're going through the motions. You show up to the studio out of discipline rather than desire, and while discipline can carry you for a while, eventually the absence of passion starts to feel like a warning sign. Am I still meant to be doing this? Have I lost whatever made me an artist in the first place? These questions can spiral into existential crises that make it even harder to work.

This isn't failure. It's a natural part of a long-term practice, and knowing how to navigate these dry spells keeps them from becoming permanent. The first thing to understand is that passion isn't meant to be constant. It ebbs and flows like everything else. Expecting to feel passionate every time you enter the studio is like expecting to feel romantic toward your partner every single day. The love is still there even when the butterflies aren't, and the commitment to your practice remains even when the excitement fades. But you do need strategies for rekindling the spark when it's been gone too long.

Sometimes passion fades because you've been grinding without rest. You've been so focused on productivity and output that you've forgotten to refill the well. You've been running on fumes, drawing from an empty reservoir, and now there's nothing left to pull from. The solution here is strategic rest and input. Take a week off from making and spend it looking at art, reading, going to museums, watching films, or just being in nature. Your brain needs raw material to work with, and if you're always outputting without inputting, you run dry. This isn't laziness or procrastination. It's essential maintenance that every creative practice requires.

During these input phases, don't put pressure on yourself to feel immediately inspired or to find direct applications for what you're taking in. Just let yourself be curious and receptive. Go to shows you wouldn't normally attend. Read books outside your usual interests. Travel if you can, even just to a nearby town you've never explored. The goal is to expose yourself to new stimuli that might spark something you can't predict. Often the connections happen later, sometimes months after the initial exposure, when something you saw or read suddenly resonates with a problem you're trying to solve.

Other times passion fades because you've gotten too comfortable. You're making the same type of work in the same way, and while you might be good at it, there's no discovery anymore. You know what you're going to get before you start. The work has become routine rather than exploration. The antidote is deliberate experimentation. Give yourself permission to make bad work in service of trying something new. Switch mediums for a month. Work with a color palette you'd normally never use. Impose weird constraints and see what happens. Make something you'd be embarrassed to show anyone. Often passion returns when you're back in beginner's mind, learning rather than executing, failing rather than succeeding safely.

Set up experiments with specific parameters but open outcomes. Spend a week making only black and white work. Try working much larger or much smaller than usual. Use only found objects for a month. Work from memory instead of reference. These constraints force you out of habitual patterns and make you solve problems freshly. The work might not be your best, but the process of figuring things out often reignites the curiosity that drew you to art in the first place.

Sometimes the fade is deeper and signals that you need a real shift. Maybe the work you've been making no longer aligns with who you are. Maybe you've been following a path that made sense five years ago but doesn't anymore. Maybe you've been making work that gets good responses but doesn't actually satisfy you. This is scarier because it means acknowledging that change is necessary, that you might need to walk away from approaches or subjects or even entire bodies of work that define how people see you. But it's also where real growth happens.

This kind of shift doesn't have to be dramatic or public. You don't have to announce that you're completely changing direction. You can start quietly, making new work in your studio without showing it to anyone, seeing where it wants to go before deciding if it's a detour or a new path. Give yourself permission to pivot without seeing it as abandoning everything you've built. All your skills, your way of seeing, your accumulated knowledge, it all comes with you. You're just pointing it in a new direction. And often what feels like a complete departure is actually a deeper exploration of themes you've been circling all along.

Reconnecting with your earliest artistic loves can help too. What did you make before you knew what you were supposed to make? What materials or subjects excited you before you started trying to build a coherent body of work? What did you do just for fun, with no agenda or career implications? Sometimes revisiting those early fascinations, even just as play, reminds you of the pure joy that started all this. Maybe you spent hours drawing horses as a kid and haven't drawn an animal in fifteen years because it doesn't fit your serious conceptual practice. Maybe you loved making tiny detailed drawings before you decided scale and boldness were more important. Going back to these early loves isn't regression. It's reconnecting with fundamental sources of pleasure that you may have abandoned for reasons that no longer serve you.

And sometimes you just need to accept that not every day, week, or month will feel passionate, and that's okay. Passion isn't a constant state. It comes and goes. What matters is that you've built a practice that can withstand its absence. You show up anyway. You do the work anyway. You trust that passion will return because it always has before. This isn't about white-knuckling through misery indefinitely. It's about understanding that creative work has seasons, and winter is part of the cycle even though it doesn't feel as good as spring. You keep tending the garden even when nothing's blooming, because that's what makes the blooming possible when the time is right.

The artists who sustain decades-long practices aren't the ones who feel passionate all the time. They're the ones who've learned to work without it when necessary and who know how to invite it back when it's been gone too long. They understand that motivation and passion are results of showing up consistently, not prerequisites for starting. They've built systems and relationships and habits that support their practice through the inevitable ups and downs. And most importantly, they've made peace with the fact that this work is sometimes hard, sometimes boring, sometimes frustrating, and still worth doing. That's not settling for less than you deserve. That's wisdom.