Art and Fear

“Fear that your next work will fail is a normal, recurring and generally healthy part of the art-making cycle.  It happens all the time: you focus on some new idea in your work, you try it out, run with it for a while, reach a point of diminishing returns, and eventually decide it’s not worth pursuing further.”

I never really had much of a fear that my art would fail. Either I will love or I will hate it, but either I am going to start over and try something new. I completely agree with the author though on the cycle of art life; it just keeps going and once you have what you’ve been working for, you start all over. It’s just the nature of being an artist. God puts it in our blood to always be creating new things and whether they are good or bad according to the public or in our own eyes; as long as we do it for God we can be sure that He is using us to the best of our abilities.

Another quote Bayles and Orland use is “perfect is the enemy of good”, which is so true. I don’t think such a thing as the perfect piece of artwork can exist because it’s different for everyone. I’ve noticed often times when I try my hardest to get something to look perfect it usually spoils the entire picture. Recently this semester I had to relearn that lesson in my Digital Drawing and Painting class. Sometimes up close a picture can look perfect, but when the teacher puts it on the board for the whole class to see I realize how my attempt at perfect squandered the painting. Of course this isn’t to that we should never try to be perfect because as Christians the Bible calls us to follow Christ. We never will be perfect, but sin is not an excuse to stop trying.