The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.

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

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.

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

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, t

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

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

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.”

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.