Skip to main content

Art and Fear

I looked at an old sketch book from 2007 yesterday. From time to time I review my old sketch books to find inspiration and to see what I was thinking one year, three years, five years ago. I'm often surprised to find that similar ideas circulate throughout my work. Sometimes I complete a painting only to discover later on when perusing my sketchbooks that I had made an earlier sketch of the same image.

Yesterday what inspired me were some quotes from the book, "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

I wrote these notes in my sketchbook that continue to resonate with me.

"As an artist you're expected to make each successive piece uniquely new and different yet reassuringly familiar when set alongside your earlier work. You're expected to make art that's intimately (perhaps even painfully) personal-yet alluring and easily grasped by an audience that has never known you personally."

"..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. How could you NOT take criticism of that work personally?"

And this: ..."in our artwork there is nothing but reaction. The breathtakingly wonderful thing about this reaction is its truthfulness. Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back and when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in it's pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes."
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liminal Time

 The word liminal comes from the Latin, limen meaning threshold. an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing. Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places. Crepuscular animals, like foxes and coyotes are most active at this time of day, a time that is considered a magical time in Celtic spirituality and to Indigenous people which is perhaps the origin of their designation as tricksters.   As I write this, the northern hemisphere has just passed the vernal equinox, where day and night are of equal length.We are in a liminal space between winter and spring right now, unsure if we will have one more storm or snowfall before spring finally settles in. We're also in a liminal place as we live through this pandemic with the  anxiety and discomfort of not  knowing. A  time of great transition for the entire world, wondering what we've learned from this and what lessons we'll carry forward.     Author and Fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland   I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article   here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resultin...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Can't Wait to Travel Again

                        I miss travelling! I’ve always loved to travel especially to wild and remote places  but living on an artist’s unsteady salary, I’ve learned to find inexpensive ways to travel. Several years ago, I discovered  artist residencies, which provide accommodation and small studio spaces. These are available to artists all over the world, some of which are free depending on acceptance of your application, others cost a small amount. I prefer ones that are remote but provide accommodation to a small group of artists rather than just one person. The interaction with artists from other countries is a stimulating, enlightening and enriching experience.                  St. John's Newfoundland 2019 After I’d been teaching painting classes for several years in various parts of Canada, the US, as well as in Sweden and Iceland, I had the idea to combine m...
Post a Comment
Read more