Finding Your Work

Art & Fear: Observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking

by Bayles and Orland

We've reached chapter 5, which is about "Finding Your Work." This seems to be a common theme in many of the books that I've reviewed on this blog over the past year, but let's wade in anyway and see what these authors have to say about it.

The chapter begins by describing how our artwork mirrors us: Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes. Indeed, if we are truthful in our artmaking, the our work must mirror us.

Unfortunately, there are many obstacles along our path to "finding our work." Foremost among those obstacles is uncertainty. The process of artmaking is bounded on one end by a concept and the other end by the finished product, and in between lots of uncertainty. We have to figure it out as we go along, and this leads to many of the doubts and fears that we discussed in chapter 2, "Fears About Yourself."

Another obstacle is inhibition. The truth is, most of us are too inhibited to express in our art what we're really thinking or feeling. We hold back in fear of the judgement of others and that's an obstacle to our work. The authors dealt with this in the previous chapter, "Fears About Others."

Despite these obstacles, we do have a starting place for finding our work. Artmaking is done within a historical context and usually reflects the time in which it is made. We express the world as we see and experience it. There's always something we can say that's a unique perspective. Recognizing and responding to that starting point is essential to finding our work.

If, indeed, for any given time only a certain sort of work resonates with life, then that is the work you need to be doing in that moment. If you try to do some other work, you will miss your moment. I like the word "moment." The job of the artist is to capture moments from both the external and internal realms.

However, the authenticity of artmaking today is threatened by the vast amount of information-sharing and technology that enables artists to appropriate images and ideas with which they have no personal knowledge or experience. This renders the work somewhat meaningless, and worse yet, misunderstood. There's a difference between meaning that's embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman's hat except a Greek fisherman.

What are your thoughts?