It reminds me of a place I worked where one “flame artist” liked to frequently say “we just make license plates here.” What occurred to me in that moment in my inner monolog was “ah, that is why her work looks so bland. She sees her work as making license plates, and it shows.”
Sure, plenty of stuff we do is kind of more or less just executing. But that is not what people come for when they’re looking for a top Flame artist.
For example I’m doing a shot now, flat bid, that I could have turned in hours ago and the client would have approved and it was completely passable work. But on my own I’m going in and adding 1,000 tiny flourishes that make it 1000% better. Higher end creative stuff that comes only from the person holding the pen, whatever name you want to refer to them as.
Client isn’t sophisticated enough to ask for these things or to know why exactly it looks so good. They just know it looks really, really good. And that’s why they’ll come back to me and folks like me, rather than plenty of people who are cheaper, who just execute and install cabinets.
Just my $0.00002.