… your desire to make art—beautiful or meaningful or emotive art—is integral to your sense of who you are. Life and art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable… The line between the artist and his/her work is a fine one at best, and for the artist it feels (quite naturally) like there is no such line. p. 13
Art & Fear
We’re all subject to a familiar and universal progression of human troubles—troubles we routinely survive, but which are (oddly enough) routinely fatal to the artmaking process. To survive as an artist requires confronting these troubles. Basically, those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue—or more precisely, have learned how not to quit.
Art & Fear
The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential… The best you can do is make art you care about—and lots of it!
Art & Fear
… the only people who will really care about your work are those who care about you personally. Those close to you know that making the work is essential to your well being. They will always care about your work, if not because it is great, then because it is yours—and this is something to be genuinely thankful for. p 6
Art & Fear
… artmaking can be a rather lonely, thankless affair. Virtually all artists spend some of their time (and some artists spend virtually all of their time) producing work that no one much cares about… the disinterest of others hardly ever reflects a gulf in vision. p. 5
Art & Fear
Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do and what you did. In fact, if artmaking did not tell you (the maker) so enormously much about yourself, then making art that matters to you would be impossible. To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished art. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping the artwork. p. 4, 5
Art & Fear
The conventional wisdom here is that while “craft” can be taught, “art” remains a magical gift bestowed only by the gods.. Not so. In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive… Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work. p. 3
Art & Fear
Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself… Yet even the notion you have a say in this process conflicts with the prevailing view of artmaking today—namely, that art rests fundamentally upon talent, and that talent is a gift randomly built into some people and not into others… you either have it or you don’t. p. 2
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Art Making; Bayles, Orland
Making art is difficult…[it] means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience or reward. p. 1, 2