topic > art and fear

Rust

August 26, 2020 in Art as a professiontopics:, ,

Whenever you haven’t made art in a while — whether its been a few days or a few months — you get rusty. Starting again is always a slow and sputtering process. I can almost feel a coarse red grit slowing my creativity down to a crawl, hampering my ability to create. And with that grit often comes the same familiar doubts. But I have learned through experience that this “creative rust” is not a problem, but a necessary part of the artistic process.


Success

September 18, 2013 in Art as a professiontopics:

Just as failure shouldn’t be feared, success shouldn’t be placed on a pedestal. Success is neither impossible nor assured. It is just another part of the creative process, that ongoing cycle of failure to success to failure to success (with tons of hard work in…  read more


Failure

September 12, 2013 in Art as a professiontopics:

We are all so afraid to fail, or even afraid to admit it when we do. But failure is a normal part of life, especially the life of an artist. We are tightrope walkers, attempting to do a profession that is odd, ridiculous, and against…  read more


learn the craft of selling your art

April 12, 2013 in Art as a professiontopics:,

The incomparable Ze Frank just put up a video talking about living the creative life. A lot of the “secret” behind living a creative life is in actually, well, living a creative life. Like incomparable Ze Frank says, if you want to be a writer,…  read more


my job is absurd

June 17, 2011 in Art as a professiontopics:,

My job is absurd. When I stop to think about it, what I do for a living is simply, utterly absurd. Today I spent hours staring at the seed from a maple tree. Not the whole seed, mind you, but a fragment of that seed….  read more


a little help from your friends

September 11, 2009 in About my art & Art as a professiontopics:

Sometimes you need the help of friends and peers to see the potential in your own art. I had spent yesterday photographing some flowers we picked up at the farmers market last weekend. But after several hours of work, I was growing frustrated. Nothing was…  read more


the leaf hunt

December 03, 2008 in Art as a professiontopics:, , ,

As autumn gives way to winter, my ketubah business tends to slow down, and I find more time to spend working in the studio. Autumn is a important time for me: to collect things to photograph, to search for new ideas and inspiration. My son…  read more


Fear, creativity, and the stock market

September 18, 2008 in Art as a professiontopics:,

While continuing our conversation on creativity and fear continues over on this post, I realized that the recent insanity in the stock market gives us as artists a good lesson on the nature of fear. (“What?,” you say, “artists learning from.. the stock market?” Yes,…  read more


Conversation on creativity and fear

September 15, 2008 in Art as a professiontopics:,

Two years ago I wrote about the relationship between creativity and fear. This past weekend, the conversation got reignited by a couple new visitors to my blog, and we’ve been having an interesting discussion about it. Check it out and join in!


Rewriting my artist’s statement

July 11, 2008 in Art as a professiontopics:,

I find that one of the biggest challenges I face as an artist is writing my artist’s statement. Putting your vision and artistic ideas into words is a nearly impossible task. I mean, one of the reasons I became an artist was to try to…  read more