“Fear that you are not a real artist causes you to undervalue your work” (p.24)
I loved this reading because it discusses the fear people have as Artists; many artists or creatives don’t live up to their potential because of fear. The clay pot example explained this fear perfectly, how the students started theorizing on perfection to create a perfect pot instead of accepting that art is flawed and shouldn’t be fixed as it is meant to be flawed, create a pot that they will keep continuously revising and improving towards something nice.
The biggest part about being an artist is accepting that talent isn’t the playing factor in an artist’s career; it’s actually their hard work and their determination, them not caring about people’s judgments too much nor criticizing themselves too much but working hard and practicing and advancing from there on ways someone can improve their artworks. Talent should be seen as a headstart, not the winning of a “race.” practicing and putting your mind to it is how you finish the race, both the person with the “natural talent” and you.
As much as art is an expression of emotions on a medium, you need to set your emotions of fear, worry, wants, and needs aside when creating to create and not doubt yourself but build up on what you began with and watch your art improve. It makes me sad sometimes that people give up on arts. I will plead guilty to having once felt that fear because I wasn’t as good as people in the industry for years. I gave up on creating for a while, but then I realized how irrational that was of me to compare myself too much instead of putting effort, trying, and most importantly, enjoying myself. After all, big artists and prodigies exist, but this chapter perfectly illustrates two things:
1) Don’t be too hard on yourself; accept your art and its flaws, appreciate it, build on it, and improve.
2) Work hard and stay patient; no matter how frustrating, the frustration will be rewarding eventually.
At the end of this chapter, the author mentioned how we should treat our artworks as our children, which I fully agree with. I think it’s one of the best ways to approach art, a child is a lot of hard work and determination, but you don’t judge yourself; you keep teaching and keeping after the child until he can one day do the same. In this way, we are all really artists.