Chapter 3

Fears About Yourself

  • When you act out of fear, your fears come true.
  • Two types of fear:
    • Fear about yourself
      • Prevents you from doing your best
    • Fear about the reception of your work by others.
      • Prevents you from doing you own work.

Pretending

  • Fear that you are just pretending to do art.
  • Comes from doubting your credentials as an artist.
  • Sometimes you will hit a wall and work becomes slow. Here, if you believe that art can only be made by extraordinary people, this wall will confirm that you are not.
  • Art (both making and viewing) takes a lot of energy, and the art is for extraordinary people mindset gives you an excuse to quit.
  • You may sometimes feel like you are pretending to be an artist, but this is impossible.
    • Your work not being recieved well or not being exhibited somewhere does not make you a pretender. This is a completely different issue.
  • Someone has to do an artist's work, and you are doing it.

Talent

  • Talent is about what comes easily, and you will reach a point where things don't come easily.

  • Pondering about how much talent you have is the most wasteful thing you could do in art. It is also the most common sentiment artists have.

  • Talent may give someone a head start, but without direction or goal it is meaningless.

  • Those who rely on talent will peak quickly and fade quicker.

  • Mozart improved his work by working.

  • Artist get better by improving their skills / learning new ones

    • by working.
    • by learning new things from their past work.
  • Why does it not come easily then?

    • Because art is hard.
  • Practical questions about talent

    • Who cares? Nobody.
    • Who would know? Nobody.
    • What difference will it make? None.

Perfection

  • Art is human, error is human, ergo, art is error.
  • Your art will inevitably be flawed.
  • If art needs to be perfect, no existing work would qualify as art.
  • To require perfection is to invite paralysis.
  • Demanding perfection is to deny humanity.
  • The seed of you next work lies within the imperfections of your current piece.
    • These are your guides that are valuable and reliable.
    • These give meaning to the art you are making.

Annihilation

  • Some equate themselves with their art too much that they equate not making art with not being.
  • This is a common but mostly overdrawn existential fear that some part of you dies when you stop making art.
  • It is true, and the risk of not doing work depends on your need and desire to make stuff.

Magic

  • Maybe making art requires something special, something magical, that I don't have?
  • This belief gives you the need to prove that your work does have some magic to it.
  • With this mindset, when the work does turn out good, you are inclined to believe it's a fluke. If it doesn't, it's an omen.
  • There might be something special needed in order to make art, but it isn't a universal one. It will be personal to each individual artist.
    • But it doesn't matter.
    • Point is, whatever that person has, even if you had it, it wouldn't help. If you had some kind of magic, it will help, but you probably don't need it.

Expectations

  • Balance between imagination and calculation.
    • Too much imagination: you are filled with fantasies
    • Too much calculation: you spend your life generating to-do lists.
  • Expectations can very easily drift into imagination.
    • Almost always leads to disillusionment.
  • Expectations based on the work itself is the most useful to the artist.
    • What do you need to do on your next piece? The last piece has the information.
    • Your work is your guide and reference.
  • So you need to look at your work without judegment / need or fear / hopes / expectations.
  • It is about asking what your work needs, not what you need.

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