vision is always ahead of execution — and it should be.

To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers’ concerns are not your concerns (although it’s dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it,

Some artists identify so closely with their own work that were they to cease producing, they fear they would be nothing — that they would cease existing.

Conversely, catering to fears of being misunderstood leaves you dependent upon your audience. In the simplest yet most deadly scenario, ideas are diluted to what you imagine your audience can imagine, leading to work that is condescending, arrogant, or both. Worse yet, you discard your own highest vision in the process.

One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential.

We abdicate artistic decision-making to others when we fear that the work itself will not bring us the understanding, acceptance and approval we seek.

The artist’s life is frustrating not because the passage is slow, but because he imagines it to be fast.

What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don’t, quit.

Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution — and it should be. Vision, Uncertainty, and Knowledge of Materials are inevitabilities that all artists must acknowledge and learn from: vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue.