Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (And Rewards of Artmaking) - Softcover

Bayles, David; Orland, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0884963799 ISBN 13: 9780884963790

Publisher: Capra Pr, 1994

Synopsis

What is your art really about? Where is it going? What stands in the way of getting it there?

These are questions that matter, questions that recur at each stage of artistic development—and they are the source for this volume of wonderfully incisive commentary. Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

This is a book about what it feels like to sit in your studio or classroom, at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing free will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work.

About this title

From the Author

This book is written by working artists, for working artists
Art & Fear is a book about the way art gets made, the reasons it often does not get made, and about the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The authors (David Bayles & Ted Orland) are both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. The observations we make are drawn from personal experience, and relate more to the needs of fellow artists than to the interests of viewers. Do not mistake Art & Fear for a pop psychology self-help book -- we are not interested in freeing your inner child! This is a book about what it feels like to sit down at your wheel or keyboard, easel or camera, trying to do the work you need to do. Simply put, you have a choice between giving your art your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot and thereby GUARANTEEING that it will not make you happy. What we have tried to do is illuminate the obstacles you face, and offer some artistic strategies for getting past them. Art & Fear has never been advertised and was never reviewed by a major publication, but it has nonetheless become something of an underground classic in the three years since it was published. Our distributor says it has become required reading for at least a few hundred university art courses across the country. (One painting instructor told us that, over the course of the semester, she reads the entire book aloud to her drawing class as background input while they¹re at work in the classroom studio.) It is now in its seventh printing.

About the Author

David Bayles is an accomplished photographer, author, workshop leader, and conservationist. He has studied with Ansel Adams and Brett Weston, among others, and has taught and written extensively in the arts for over thirty years.Ted Orland, the author of The View from the Studio Door, currently pursues parallel careers in teaching, writing, and photography.
Arthur Morey has recorded over two hundred audiobooks in history, fiction, science, business, and religion, earning a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Award nominations. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Capra Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0884963799
• ISBN 13: 9780884963790
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English