Art and Fear

"Fears about artmaking fall into two families: fears about yourself, and fears about your reception by others." I definitely fall into the first category. I'm very critical of my own work, and sometime fear taking risks in art. I'm afraid of destroying my art and usually play it safe. "You Cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do-- away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart." This quote basically sums up my fear of art. I can officially fall into the second category. I don't fear that people won't like my art, I'm afraid people won't understand what I am trying to say in my art. I usually try to say something through my art, and fear that people won't pick up or understand the message.

"Hovering out there somewhere between cause and effect, between fears about self and fear about others, lie expectations." This is another big problem for me. As I have said before I am a perfectionist. I'm very tough on my work and expect it to be perfect. I stress about the small details. Ill work and rework small details for hours. I should just leave it and be okay with it looking how it does, instead of trying to make it perfect.

Twyla Tharp

I have two main problem in the art room. The first being finding inspiration. It usually takes me to come up with ideas for art. Twyla Tharp mentions the idea of scratching. Scratching is "digging through everything to find something." I like this idea, because I have the problem of coming up with ideas. If I "dig" through everything, I can find what I think is most important, inspirational, and artistic. I think that art is definitely influenced by the world around the artist. When artists are faced with difficult times, you can see them coping in their artwork.

My second problem is that I am a perfectionist. When I know what I want to make, I don't stop working on it until it the exact way I want it to look. Tharp states this as a problem. She calls it perfectionism at the start. I know this is one of my weaknesses, so I will focus on fixing it.

Studio

HW March 2nd

In most studios there are paintings in work, windows, usually a lot of space, a small mess, many artistic tools, and in a few a ladder. I think that artist often have many project going at once, which explains for the mess, variety of tools, art work incomplete, and the small mess. I think that artist have windows and plenty of room so the creative is not captured in a small dark room. It would be difficult to think creatively and of new ideas if you are constantly trapped in a small room looking at the same thing everyday.

In the slide show, we saw how art work can be related to the artist's studio. For example, Alexander Calder, he make mobiles that seem to be flying, and his studio is on top of a hill and has huge window. In a way, it feels as if his studio is flying as well. Many artists accommodate for their disabilities. For example, Frida Kahlo, her physical "studio" disappeared when she was bed-sick. Her art often showed symbols that represented her situation.

When I look around my "studio," which is my bed room, I see a lot of pictures, bright colored pillows, an open window, and a rather large pile of clothes. I like having a large window and bright colors, because I do not like feeling trapped in my small room. I like the feeling of a room feeling open, free, able to breathe.