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

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Apparently, a good portion of the Artists Network community craves vulnerable conversations, too. (Are you surprised?) How do you deal with fear as an artist?

This is a great book for ALL people, artist or not, professional or amateur. What I mean by that is, whether you want to start cooking, gardening, dancing, painting -- WHATEVER! -- it helps give you motivation to do so.His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

The seminar will be led by Dr. Sacha Golob, Dr. Emma Syea and Vanessa Brassey from the King's College London, Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a research article on the relationship between philosophy and their experience of the All Too Human exhibition.I basically go out of my comfort zone by pushing and selling my wares. I’ve met many interesting people and will continue to try to make connections to gather exposure and sales. — Dee S 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. I go to a modern art museum. When I look at some of the pieces that cost thousands — maybe even millions — of dollars for what they did, it encourages me to go home and paint. — Marilynn K Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be.” 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.

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 At other times, the therapist might want to more directly encourage the expression or exploration of emotions through art. They might set up a directive in a way that will enhance affective processing or will directly give clients a prompt to make art related to their feelings. Why is it helpful for clients to express emotions through art? 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. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential. X-rays of famous paintings reveal that even master artists sometimes made basic mid-course corrections (or deleted really dumb mistakes) by overpainting the still-wet canvas. The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about — and lots of it!” What I love about this book is that it uses art to talk about life. Specifically, it uses art and fear to talk about how our choice to have courage or not drives the degree of light you will manifest in your own life. The writers explore the human need for acceptance, fear of failure, communication sensibilities between your work and yourself versus your work and the outside world.When I’ve done this in a group setting, there is the additional benefit of experiencing one’s emotions accepted and witnessed by the whole group. Group members are often able to relate to each other and enjoy discussing the common connections that they see. 6 image art sequence to help with expressing emotions Sacha Golob is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London and the Director of the Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts; before joining King’s, he was a Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He has published extensively on French and German Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Art. His current research explores contemporary conceptions of virtue and degeneration. There really wasn't any excuse not to reference more women. There are so many wonderful, talented, brave artists out there who would have made for better material than "a friend of the authors".

It’s a wonderful story, with an enormous amount of truth to it. Part of the reason I’m writing this blog relatively regularly is because of the principle embedded within it. Quantity produces quality. Theorising is death. You need to move, be proactive. 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. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.