I’m reading Rick Rubin’s new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It’s the best book on making art & living a creative life I’ve read since reading Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. Here’s an excerpt from Rubins new book: Freedom There…
Tag: David Bayles
Art and Fear
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 guess I mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards)…
If you don’t enjoy the doing, then do something else …
AND SO: here is a post bordering on New-Age claptrap, I still hope it can give some sense For some of us starting new things, changing direction, entertaining new ideas – stirs fear: As children most of us are encouraged to believe that our life should somehow fulfill the expectations of others, that we will (or…
A custodian of larger issues (cont.)
“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. Your cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do, away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the…
A custodian of larger issues (cont.)
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. It grants access to worlds you may otherwise never fully engage. It may in fact be the engagement—not the art—that you seek….
A custodian of larger issues
“It is a widely accepted notion that making art is about self-expression. And it is – but that is not necessarily all it is. It may only be a passing feature of our times that validating the sense of who-you-are is held up as the major source of the need to make art. What gets…
How creativity works
The way of an artist is an entirely different way. It is a way of surrender. He must surrender to his own mind — Agnes Martin As many artists, Agnes Martin underlined the necessity of having a strict schedule, she went to her studio at least three hours every morning, whether she felt like it or not, where…
3 questions
Henry James once proposed three questions you could productively put to an artist’s work: what is the artist trying to achieve? does he/she succeed? is it worth doing? In the great little book Art & Fear Bayles and Orland examines James’ questions, and comments: The first two questions ask you to respond to the work itself,…
sub rosa 