Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland.
If you make art, or want to make art, or think about making art, you should read it immediately. It perfectly describes my biggest pet peeve--people that don't make art because they think they're not geniuses:
"...the prevailing view of artmaking today--namely, that art rests fundamentally upon talent, and that talent is a gift randomly built into some people and not into others. In common parlance, either you have it or you don't....This view is inherently fatalistic--even if it's true, it's fatalistic--and offers no useful encouragement to those who would make art. Personally, we'll side with Conrad's view of fatalism: namely, that it is a species of fear--the fear that your fate is in your own hands, but that your hands are weak." (2)
I love that. The effort, the courage, the act of making art for yourself will change you, even if it's never noticed by anyone else. It's so worth doing.
In other news, I bought a beautiful wool Banana Republic peacoat with bell sleeves today. It's black, of course, and makes me feel mysterious, like I should be walking around San Francisco in a fog and staring at a painting for hours in an empty museum.
Things have been going really well lately. You know you're going to have a good week when someone gives you an orchid and twenty bags of Haribo gummy bears. La la la, my life is rad.
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