Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

This is not good. After all, wanting to be understood is a basic need — an affirmation of the humanity you share with everyone around you. The risk is fearsome: in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, “you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy.”

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.

Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.

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

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.

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.

That moment of completion is also, inevitably, a moment of loss — the loss of all the other forms the imagined piece might have taken. The irony here is that the piece you make is always one step removed from what you imagined, or what else you can imagine, or what you’re right on the edge of being able to imagine.