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

by David Bayles

Making art is a common and intimately human activity,

Making art now 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 nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.

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.

Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.

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 artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork.

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.

The best you can do is make art you care about — and lots of it!

Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.

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

The development of an imagined piece into an actual piece is a progression of decreasing possibilities, as each step in execution reduces future options by converting one — and only one — possibility into a reality.

Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending. The risks are obvious: you may never get to the end of the sentence at all-or having gotten there, you may not have said anything.

Art happens between you and something — a subject, an idea, a technique — and both you and that something need to be free to move.

Control, apparently, is not the answer. People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive or spontaneous.

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

Fear that you are not a real artist causes you to undervalue your work.

Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error.

the seed for your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece.

What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece.

ART IS OFTEN MADE IN ABANDONMENT, emerging unbidden in moments of selfless rapport with the materials and ideas we care about. In such moments we leave no space for others. That’s probably as it should be. Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees.

for most art there is no client, and in making it you lay bare a truth you perhaps never anticipated: that by your very contact with what you love, you have exposed yourself to the world.

the real question about acceptance is not whether your work will be viewed as art, but whether it will be viewed as your art.

The work we make, even if unnoticed and undesired by the world, vibrates in perfect harmony to everything we put into it —

When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.

in most matters of art it is more nourishing to be a maker than a viewer.

For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art,

art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between pieces, not in the pieces themselves.

it’s apparent that at some level, all art is autobiographical.

Some people who make art are driven by inspiration, others by provocation, still others by desperation.

Artmaking grants access to worlds that may be dangerous, sacred, forbidden, seductive, or all of the above.