Fail! Not possible.

4 beliefs that keep you from making art and why they aren’t true.

Two criminals get a chance and they take it. They start running away from their captors but no one notices. quickly they manage to put a great distance between themselves and the authorities before they’re noticed. Freedom urges them on until suddenly, wham! They fail spectacularly, slamming into each other via the handcuffs that link their arms and the annoying telephone pole that somehow found it’s way between them as they ran. They lay dazed on the ground until re-apprehended.

Yes, that would be failure. There are mistakes that lead to negative consequences, but not for you. There are no mistakes in art. You cannot fail. You cannot waste your time or effort. I will go so far as to say that if you are not making art that is bound for the trashcan, then you are not a real artist.

Think about the consequences. At the very absolute worst, you throw some materials away and take what you’ve learned to steer yourself in a better direction. What is there to be afraid of?

But the feeling that this is something bad – that to create a lousy-looking painting is a huge failure – persists. Why? The answer to that question is complex, but most of it has to do with the perceptions of our culture in general, not with any one person’s ideas. So now I’d like to suggest some alternative thinking. Here are 4 reasons for fear of failure.

Number one. A big reason that we’re afraid of artistic failure is nothing more than an erroneous conclusion based on supply and demand. It has nothing at all to do with the aesthetic value of art. I shall explain. All of the “masters” have a limited supply of work, and each and every work therefore has a high value. Even the poorest work by Van Gogh, for instance, sells for amazing amounts of money. This is because his best work is valued even more. a rough sketch by renoir is also highly valued, even though he might have intended for it to be a learning step towards a finished piece. It’s because all of the masters’ work is so desirable, whether or not it is their best work, that we get the crazy idea that every single thing that a “real” artist produces, must be excellent. We don’t differentiate between their good work and their not so good work.

Since well-known artists were very conscious of their image, we can also assume that most of their learning work was destroyed by the artists themselves. I get rid of mine.

It is unreasonable to think that every single thing an artist does will be their best. All artists have to learn and create work that they do not feel good about showing to others.

Two – Massive Confusion. People are mostly unsure about what artistic talent is, and how good art is defined. It seems to be a mysterious thing without understandable rules. Here are five reasons for this confusion.

1) modern art has created a vast disconnect between what is deemed “great art” and what people actually admire. No one can name a nationally known painter or sculptor from 1970 to today. Why? Because serious art by serious artists is so far removed from relevancy that even knowledgeable people don’t like it or understand it. Most people cannot really decide if a work of art is supposed to be good or bad. They only know that they don’t understand why serious art is so weird.
2) We try so hard to not hurt anyone’s feelings, that we sometimes elevate all art to the acceptable level, whether anyone enjoys looking at it or not. Some teachers say that everyone is an artist. This makes us question the validity when people say that art is good.
3) Most people view art in photographs instead of in person. It is almost impossible to understand a work in this way. No photo can do a great work justice.
4) Artists themselves are sometimes very elitist, and reject other artist’s work as worthless.
5) There is a general feeling that true artists are born with some kind of indefinable inner muse, and that training would only ruin their artistic freedoms.

Do you know any musician who could play music that everyone liked to listen to without any practice at all? It’s like saying that a piano student who can’t play their scales on the first try, should give up. There is no more mystery to visual artistry than there is with music. Just like any other creative endeavor, artists must work hard and go through a learning stage. There are rules and tools that can be learned and mastered. And, just like other proclivities, an artist will probably be born with some amount of passion for their work, as well as a set of gifts that help them progress.

I am frequently asked about “talent” and whether or not someone in particular has enough of whatever it is, to be able to become an artist. I have given the same answer for at least 20 years. Here’s the math:

10% giftings, or genetic talents.
10% training in techniques and concepts
80% passion and the hard work that results from it.

I expressed the truth of this in a recent twitter post: Amazing talent without passion finds little purpose, but passion with only a little talent can find amazing purpose.

In other words, artists are self-created. If you consider yourself an artist, or if someone tells you that you are one, well… then you are. That doesn’t mean that everyone is an artist, or that all artists will do the same level of work. But it does mean that you should not be afraid to create and explore.

Three. We tend to hold artists up to a very, very high standard. Artists can falsely believe that they don’t measure up and quit because of this unspoken rule: Art isn’t useful as an endeavor unless you can produce superior work – the kind of art that sells in galleries and is shown in museums.

Wait a minute. Everyone is allowed to sing on occasion – even me. I love to listen to someone play the guitar or piano, but who could never get a record deal. In art, however, unless there is that special spark of genius, then there is some amount of pressure that says you really shouldn’t pursue it at all. It’s black or white. Be great or be gone.

Four. Art classes traditionally focus on critique and negative feedback. Almost everyone I talk to who is afraid to paint, has a story to tell where an authority figure squashed their enthusiasm by telling them something horrid about their abilities.

In our classes, we do not have mistakes. We only have LEARNERS and KEEPERS. Both are absolutely necessary and inevitable. The more learners you make, the more you will improve.

On the complete other end of that spectrum, if you have been told by an authority figure that everything you do is great, and you know it’s not, then you question whether any of it is good at all. Truth is encouraging, and the truth is that every artist makes learners and keepers.

So, back to failure and the fear of the blank canvas. The whole thing boils down to one question. “am I an artist?”

The answer is yes, because if you are asking that question, then you desperately want to be one. Can you fail? No. You can only practice.