Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

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By witnessing the art, the therapist gives the client the experience of validation and acceptance of their feelings. For more ideas and tips about art in therapy, be sure to sign up for the newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bOu5yj 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.

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. It is this post-war age that May identifies as the point at which anxiety becomes overt – not only because it was a time of upheaval and hardship, but because the social structures that had impeded anxiety’s explicit expression began to break down. The struggle against traditional constraints was extensively manifested in the rise of youth subcultures from the mid-20th century. New identities were forged in a spirit of resistance towards conventional values, from the 1960s countercultural movement to the punk era of the 1970s. Subcultures did not disappear by the 1990s, but they were no longer odd minorities. Consumerism effectively embraced the postmodern idea that personal identity was a purchasing choice. And now, two decades later, body art and various means of body modification are well established in the mainstream. Artists come together with the clear knowledge that when all is said and done, they will return to their studio and practice art alone. Period. That simple truth may be the deepest bond we share. The message across time from the painted bison and the carved ivory seal speaks not of the differences between the makers of that art and ourselves, but of the similarities. Today these similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity -- audience, critics, economics, trivia -- in a self-conscious world. Only in those moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it's not art. Your job is to draw a line from your art to your life that is straight and clear.” Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son is one example of this artistic shift. This work depicts Saturn, the father of Zeus in Roman mythology, eating his son. According to mythology, Saturn ate each of his children in fear that one of them would overthrow him. The first half examines the core elements of existentialist thought, and its relation to anxiety as a vehicle for self-discovery and ethical change. The second half will look at artistic depictions of emotion more broadly: how can a painted surface express happiness or misery? And who gets to judge whether it succeeds?

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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? 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. Learned of this term recently, ‘imposter syndrome’. I struggled with this much of my life without knowing it was common among most of us. Recognizing these feelings and understanding it’s normal helps. I keep my head down and create. — Kate S 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.

I go to a modern art museum. When I look at some of the pieces that cost thousands — maybe even millions — of dollars for what they did, it encourages me to go home and paint. — Marilynn K Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, science has finally left art behind, as genetic engineers prepare to turn themselves into the worst of expressionists, with the human being the raw material for new and monstrous forms of life. There is no ready vocabulary to describe the ways in which artists become artists, no recognition that artists must learn to be who they are (even as they cannot help being who they are.) We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. How do you describe the [reader to place words here] that changes when craft swells to art? Embrace the oh-my-God-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing feeling. And just enjoy the DOING and the surprise at the end. — Jean A Finding Perspective All of these have been helpful for different clients and situations, and I continue to use them when they are appropriate. However, sometimes the idea of drawing or painting feelings can be really challenging for client who aren’t used to thinking about their emotions in the language of color or metaphor (or who aren’t used to paying attention to their feelings at all).I basically go out of my comfort zone by pushing and selling my wares. I’ve met many interesting people and will continue to try to make connections to gather exposure and sales. — Dee S 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. Just keep going and let the fear stand in a far corner. It may ONLY watch but NOT interfere! — Andrea D 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 book makes it clear that it is the product, and less the product, the artist's original conception of the product or the audience's review, which matters; hence, it is the process, sittin down and practicing, which matters most. As everyone who has ever written a paper realizes, the end result has most often made so many steps away from the original conception that it is more firmly rooted in the world for having been worked over and made real than in the writer's mind.