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Q: What advice would you give to a young artist with potential?
Barbara’s studio (since April 1997)
A: I last answered this question in my blog more than ten years ago and I would say similar things now to what I said then.
Be sure that you love your process unconditionally because there is no relationship between how hard you will work and how much money you will earn, period. Indeed, with inflation and rapidly evolving ways of doing business, it seems to cost more money every year to be an artist. As I’ve said often, be prepared to work very, very hard. Really it’s all about making the most of your gifts as an artist. If you don’t feel a deep responsibility to developing your talents as far as possible, you won’t have what it takes to keep going. Countless artists quit and no one can blame them. You absolutely must love your materials and your creative process and be willing to do whatever it takes to continue making art.
This is not a life for slackers!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 116
Preliminary sketch
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
What is the point of all the discipline, hard work, and training? What does the training and preparation have to do with rehearsing a play and with performance? The training and the discipline and the sweating and the study and the memorizing are not the end point, but rather the entry. The preparation is what gives one the permission to take up space and make wild, surprising, and untamed choices. In the quest for artistic freedom and agency it is impossible to walk into a rehearsal room uninhibited, unburdened. We are generally chained down by habits and assumptions and by fear of the new. Permission is what we earn by the sweat, training, preparatory work and dedication.
Anne Bogart in What’s the Story: Essays in art, theater, and storytelling
Comments are welcome!
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