After teaching art to high schoolers for 18 years, I have learned that to conquer fear you must face it head on. With that your insecurities will disappear. — Robin D For each of the emotions, I encourage clients to do an abstract picture and avoid words, faces, and recognizable images. I ask them to think about what colors they connect with each feeling and then what lines, shapes, and gestures could express that feeling. First of all, there were a couple of gold nuggets in the book. I rather liked the anecdote of an artist who took dancing for fun, excelled, then had to relearn how to dance for others when the chance arose for her to be part of a performance troop. It was just interesting that she had to relearn a skill she already had with a different motivation. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential. X-rays of famous paintings reveal that even master artists sometimes made basic mid-course corrections (or deleted really dumb mistakes) by overpainting the still-wet canvas. The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about — and lots of it!”

I've always been an artist, having a natural drawing talent from a very young age, delving into my art in high school, then studying art in college. I received my commercial art/graphic arts degree and even though I did not stay in my field (I hated desktop publishing, and would rather create fine art), this book has been of great help to me in pursuing art as a hobby and just for fun. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. It seemed like the book was aimed at male artists looking to have galleries. It's not something I would recommend to female artists, and certainly not to artists pursuing other careers. In the final session of this three-part series responding to the All Too Human exhibition, an artist, historian and philosopher explore the concept, experience and representation of anxiety, from the personal to the societal, within the visual arts. Speakers include poet and visual artist Heather Phillipson, art historian Caterina Albano and philosopher Aaron James Wendland. To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.”Apparently, a good portion of the Artists Network community craves vulnerable conversations, too. (Are you surprised?) How do you deal with fear as an artist? In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. The Dutch Northern Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch has puzzled historians for decades. The true meaning of his work may never be fully understood. One aspect that is certain, however, is that the nightmarish scenes depicted in his works reflect the religious fears that pervaded society at the time. The 16th century was a period of widespread religious protest and reform in Europe, sparking the separation of the Church into Protestantism and Catholicism. Like many during this period, Bosch was deeply concerned about the end of the world and humanity’s eternal punishment for its sins. Our collection Artists Artworks Art by theme Explore Videos Podcasts Short articles In depth Art Terms Tate Research Student resources Make art Create like an artist Kids art activities Tate Draw game Creating art is a gift from our creator — one of our closest things to a spiritual reward and most intimate form of individual expression. Learning not to allow one’s ego to become vulnerable to negative criticisms is our second biggest reward. — Suzanne F Fighting Perfectionism

But many clients have told me that this has been a helpful exercise for them to be able to get in touch with their emotions and to feel some relief through being able to express them. Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills. (Advanced Thinking Skills Book 4) Another example is the story of the dancer who was a great dancer, and did it because she loved to dance. She never thought of pursuing it professionally, until her teacher suggested she try out for a position (or something to that). That's when she became terrified of failing and questioned herself. She didn't enjoy dancing anymore because of the pressure to perform for others vs. just dancing for herself. The Surrealists are known for their subversive and sometimes even scary paintings. This work by Spanish artist Remedios Varo plays with the frightening, the subconscious mind and supernatural imagery, depicting a cloaked woman leaving a psychoanalyst’s office. She holds a basket full of what Varo called “psychological waste,” and a shrunken man’s head in her other hand. She dangles the head over a liquid-filled well. This is about why we fear creativity and by understanding our fears, we can conquer them, as we all know.Join us for the art event you’ve been waiting for in Mesa, Arizona from October 25-28, 2023 and enjoy a terrific lineup of educational workshops, a marketplace to shop, and community building activities. Whether you’re looking to learn a new technique, gain knowledge from a top instructor, or meet other artists, you won’t want to miss Art Fest Mesa!

Sometimes I have to remind myself of the journey I embarked upon to get here today. It was a brave step to follow my heart and ambitions. I proved myself worthy every step of the way and reached my goal of a master’s degree in painting. That’s something. Every painting is better than the last, so get to work! — Kim H This blog is not intended to diagnose or treat any mental health conditions. All directives, interventions, and ideas should be used by qualified individuals within the appropriate bounds of their education, training, and scope of practice. Information presented in this blog does not replace professional training in child and family therapy, art therapy, or play therapy . Art therapy requires a trained art therapist. First some words of introduction about why I read this book. Some people here on Goodreads know that I am using my retirement, which started several years earlier than is traditional, to concentrate on photography, a lifelong hobby that I have converted into a small business. And some of those some people know that, secretly, my passion is for abstract photography which I admire but struggle to create myself. I don't have a lot of fear about making art but many of the fears described in this book, such as pleasing others, being accepted and/or understood, being perfect and so on apply to other areas of my life and probably to everyone on the globe. At the end of the exercise, we look at all of the pictures together, exploring how they are similar or different and discussing how the clients is feeling today. I also often ask clients which feelings were easiest or hardest to do and how they felt while they were working on it.Everything I read in this book could also apply to the art of relationship. The art of love. You could cross out the title word Art and write LOVE & Fear, and the same concepts apply. It's specific to art,yet universal. In Art and Fear, Paul Virilio traces the twin development of art and science over the twentieth century. In his provocative and challenging vision, art and science vie with each other for the destruction of the human form as we know it. He traces the connections between the way early twentieth century avant-garde artists twisted and tortured the human form before making it vanish in abstraction, and the blasting to bits of men who were no more than cannon fodder i nthe trenches of the Great War; and between the German Expressionists' hate-filled portraits of the damned, and the 'medical' experiments of the Nazi eugenicists; and between the mangled messages of global advertising, and the organisation of global terrorism. Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward.

It also seemed as though the book was aimed specifically towards artists looking to showcase their pieces in galleries, which isn't necessarily a failing of the book so much as a narrow target demographic. fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work, while fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work.” At the end of the day, creating anything is brave. Putting it out for the world to have an opinion on? That is even braver. Deciding to be an artist is also deciding to feel that fear and do it anyway. I remind myself that I do it because I love the process, and that’s all that matters. I feel like if you create from an authentic place then it will resonate with the right person somewhere. It just needs to find them. — Erika H Muscling Through This book was recommended to me and to all of my fellow art students by a professor, whose every word is normally golden. I must say this was the exception. Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty ; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.”Take other people out of the equation. Make for yourself first. Find what makes you happy. Because when you are happy it shows in your work. — Cheyenne G When I’ve done this in a group setting, there is the additional benefit of experiencing one’s emotions accepted and witnessed by the whole group. Group members are often able to relate to each other and enjoy discussing the common connections that they see. 6 image art sequence to help with expressing emotions Finally I was really put off by the author's text in boxes. Basically from time to time, they'd have a small aside to "explain" something, but it really seemed more like snarking than anything else. For example: Unlike fear, which is a biological ‘fight or flight’ response to a present threat, anxiety is ‘fear without a definite object’, as the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard established in 1844’s The Concept of Anxiety. Fear subsides when an external threat is no longer present, while anxiety festers internally but may latch on to objects in its path.