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

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I soaked up the first half of this slim guide with frequent shouts of "Yes! THIS!" and skimmed the second half with a bit of a shrug and a *meh* Isn't it odd when that happens? It's really okay, though, since I found so very much solace, empathy, and inspiration in the parts I did absorb. Things like,

It also seemed as though the book was aimed specifically towards artists looking to showcase their pieces in galleries, which isn't necessarily a failing of the book so much as a narrow target demographic. Yet viewed objectively, these fears obviously have less to do with art than they do with the artist. And even less to do with the individual artworks. After all, in making art you bring your highest skills to bear upon the materials and ideas you most care about. Art is a high calling -- fears are coincidental.French artist Camille Claudel also explored the subjective human experience in her work, this time in the form of sculpture. Having arrived in Paris aged 17, she was denied entry to the École des Beaux Arts which was male-only at the time. Nonetheless, she went on to become an accomplished artist. I make lots of sketches and color maps before starting most of my watercolors. It increases my confidence to know I’ve worked some of the kinks out before I begin. It’s most important to just show up and create something. Everyone has a unique perspective that needs to be shared with the world. — Candice M The word "creativity" is not mentioned anywhere in the book, except in the tiny segment that points this out to the reader. "Why should it?" the authors ask smugly. "Do only some people have ideas, confront problems, dream, live in the real world, and breathe air?" Yeah, okay, everyone is creative - I get it. But not discussing creativity in a book about making art? What? That's like writing a recipe book and saying "this book doesn't mention ingredients. Why should it? Do only some desserts have flour, sugar, eggs, butter?"

The book makes it clear that it is the product, and less the product, the artist's original conception of the product or the audience's review, which matters; hence, it is the process, sittin down and practicing, which matters most. As everyone who has ever written a paper realizes, the end result has most often made so many steps away from the original conception that it is more firmly rooted in the world for having been worked over and made real than in the writer's mind. But many clients have told me that this has been a helpful exercise for them to be able to get in touch with their emotions and to feel some relief through being able to express them. By creating more work to enhance my artistic skills. By doing more you strengthen your artistic muscles. — Carmen S Go With the Flaw pg 5 "The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your work that soars." As a consequence, to quote the title of a brilliant manifesto-style essay by the Institute for Precarious Consciousness, We Are All Very Anxious. Anxiety is now the dominant emotional experience of our time, precisely for this reason: anything and everything is on show, for sale and attainable, but (for too many people) perpetually withheld, out of reach. Whereas historically people were condemned to misery or boredom, anxiety becomes pervasive in conditions where free choice is unfettered, and yet at some level illusory.Sometimes I have to remind myself of the journey I embarked upon to get here today. It was a brave step to follow my heart and ambitions. I proved myself worthy every step of the way and reached my goal of a master’s degree in painting. That’s something. Every painting is better than the last, so get to work! — Kim H I am not an artist -- I am a phony. I have nothing worth saying. I'm not sure what I'm doing. Other people are better than I am. I'm only a [student/physicist/mother/whatever]. I've never had a real exhibit. No one understands my work. No one likes my work. I'm no good. I often wonder, ‘Why bother?’, especially now. I do not get into every show, and my work does not sell like hot cakes. I’ve been a working artist all my life and now, in my mid-sixties (yikes!) I’m doing my best work. I wake up with purpose each day, and while working on one painting I’m thinking about the next. Maybe that’s enough. — Carmella T What Others Think I put it on my canvas and work around it and add layers to mold it into something more confident. Otherwise, my anxiety takes over and I won’t get anywhere with the piece. — Dottie T

I was also rather perturbed by the authors' description of entertainment as mass produced, clearly meant derisively. They barely reference commercial art and then rag on how there are very few paying opportunities for artists. It seems like they're missing something there.This book was recommended to me and to all of my fellow art students by a professor, whose every word is normally golden. I must say this was the exception.

This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially—statistically speaking—there aren’t any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius. There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. How do you describe the [reader to place words here] that changes when craft swells to art? Paul Virilio is one of contemporary Continental thought's most original and provocative critical voices. His vision of the impact of modern technology on the contemporary global condition is powerful and disturbing, ranging over art, science, politics and warfare. Not every piece of art you create will be perfect, but if you let fear stop you, then you’ll never create anything. You learn from every piece you create. — Sarah B With that notion in mind, the authors explore different forms of fear that lead people to stop making art, and explain concisely why each one is silly, surmountable, and ultimately up to you to overcome. It's a beautiful piece of quasi-self-help that offers only blunt and useful considerations without any of the fluff and hand-holding with which self-help, as a genre, is infested.At the end of the day, creating anything is brave. Putting it out for the world to have an opinion on? That is even braver. Deciding to be an artist is also deciding to feel that fear and do it anyway. I remind myself that I do it because I love the process, and that’s all that matters. I feel like if you create from an authentic place then it will resonate with the right person somewhere. It just needs to find them. — Erika H Muscling Through Following the panel discussion there will be a seminar from 15.30–17.30 in the Duffield Room. This two hour seminar explores some of the key philosophical issues raised by anxiety and by artistic treatments of mood and emotion. At the end of the exercise, we look at all of the pictures together, exploring how they are similar or different and discussing how the clients is feeling today. I also often ask clients which feelings were easiest or hardest to do and how they felt while they were working on it. Visual art has more to do – not simply in documenting the range and extent of our anxieties, but in constructing the means for their relief. Foster Wallace once named ‘fiction, poetry, music’ as the arts through which the loneliness of mental illness may be ‘stared down, transfigured, treated’. Such big claims are more commonly made for both literature and music, perhaps because those forms can be experienced in private worlds. Books and music are a functional distraction from insomnia and pain, a means to quell rumination. More commonly an institutional experience, visual art does not seek to compete as cultural benzodiazepine.