Creating Space - Telling Fear To Hit The Road

One of my favorite reads has been Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. My copy of this wonderful book quite possibly did not survive the fire and man could I use it now. I have searched on line for some of my favorite lessons by Bayles and Orland and wanted to share them with you today. The messages are simple but sweet. I'll leave them for all of us to ponder. I hope that you love them as much as I do.

The poem in the head is always perfect.

Making art is chancy — it doesn’t mix well with predictability. Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

Try an insulating period: a gap of pure time between the making of your art, and the time when you share it with outsiders. (So it's not reflecting on *you*, just on the work that's in your past.)

When things go haywire, your best opening strategy might be to return — very carefully and consciously — to the habits and practices in play the last time you felt good about the work.

"When my daughter about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college — that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forgot?”" — Howard Ikemoto

The people with the interesting answers are those who ask the interesting questions.

Thank you Derek Sivers for sharing your favorites and mine