Art & Fear

We have really just begun to read out of our second textbook, "Art and Fear," and already I like it. The last chapter we read, Chapter 2, actually gave me some insight and some hope. The whole chapter was about the doubts and fears an artist faces while creating art, and that those who succeed are those who choose to except those fears and not quit. Allow me to share some quotes. "Art making 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." So true. I know this because for a while now I've been trying to write a novel of sorts and I can't help but step back and wonder where on earth this plot idea came from. Next quote: "Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be." Whew! What a relief! I'm always imagining the whole story before I've ever written the first word, and it is often hard to put those racing thoughts into words. I also can envision these fabulous ideas for paintings and other things that I'm never able to actually execute because somehow I think it could never match it up to my vision. "The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse." This thought is comforting. I just recently started rewriting that novel I'm working on because I didn't like where it was going, though it may very well end up there again. I got a lot from this chapter, I guess more on a writing level than on a digital media level because I'm not far into that yet. I can certainly see where it applies though. I suppose I need to embrace the fact behind the last 2 sentences of Chapter 2 - "Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding."