How to Be an Artist

by Jerry Saltz

One way to think about art is that it’s a visual language—usually non-verbal, arguably pre-verbal—with the power to tell us more in the blink of an eye (Augenblick, in German) than we might learn in hours of listening or reading.

But doubt is a sign of faith: it tests and humbles you, allows newness into your life. Best of all, doubt banishes the stifling effect of certainty. Certainty kills curiosity and change.

Nothing happens if you’re not working.

“The imagination is not a state,” said William Blake. “It is the human existence itself.”

Creativity is what you do with your imagination.

Forget about making things to be understood.

All art comes from love—love of doing something.

The goal is first to learn how to look—and then to describe, with your pencil or pen, what you see.

Avoid lingering on the well-worn path; you don’t want to be a minor example of someone else’s major style or idea. It’s a far better thing to let yourself get lost than never to stray at all.

The goal is to create a practice that allows a constant recalibration between your imagination and the world around you.

The artist Sister Mary Corita Kent said, “The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.”

If you can get into it within the first two hours of the day, that should be early enough to get around the pesky demons of daily life. Four hours is too long; the demons will take you down.

Every artist has his or her own relationship with these borders.

An artwork should express thought and emotion. (I contend that the two can’t be separated.)

Eric Fischl has said that he “wanted to paint what couldn’t be said.” All artists are trying, on some level, to do the same.

A work of art cannot depend on explanation.

Art is like a burning bush: it puts out more energy than went into its making.

You are your method; your life is part of your work.

For most of its entire history, though, art has been active: something that does things to or for us, that makes things happen.

Make the world your syllabus: the options are endless, and the price is right.

Artists must commune with their own kind in order to survive.

Within your gang, your coven, you must protect one another, no matter what. Even if you don’t know it, you need one another. At least for now. And this is most important: Always protect the weakest artist in your gang.

The best definition of success is time—the time to do your work.