Conquering the Fear, Artist-Style

Your soul has wings, so stop lumbering around and FLY.

I’ve had a conversation running in my head for some time now.  A conversation that I’ve wanted to bring to the blog, to share with you and ask your take on it (so leave a comment, share, what is your take?  I really do want to know).  A conversation that has been whispering to me…throughout the quiet moments of my day (which are not many) and throughout those arting dreams I have many nights.

I think a lot about how fear controls me sometimes, and how I’d like to conquer fear.  I ponder what might be the source of the fear, and I ponder how I ever let the fear get a hold of me in the first place.

I realize that none of that so much matters as does whether or not I let the fear grip me and keep from action.  The “why” of it only matters if it helps me figure out how to get past the fear.

When it comes to creating, I was thinking of fear as that thing that keeps me from trying new techniques and out-of-my-comfort-zone projects and using new colors, that sort of thing.  I was thinking that fear is what I conquer to get braver in my art, and to find my own style and free what comes out in the art.  You know what I mean?  Like, it’s easier to mimic another artist’s work, take a class to learn a new technique, look at images on the google, than it is to sit down and just play with paint or plaster or metal or whatever, and just see what happens.  That might end up in disaster, or a failure.

That’s how I saw fear.

Then something else…I realized that what I create, what comes out in the journal or on the canvas or on the crafty projects that adorn our home…these things are pieces of my heart, of my soul, a little window into what’s going inside of me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I let other people look at my art journals.  I post much of my art here on the blog.  I share pics on my facebook page.  I post art for sale in the etsy shop.  I hang it on my living room walls.  I leave my journals on a shelf in my home so others can see them.

I just leave the door to my inner self hangin’ wide open, and just invite other people right on in to have a look.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I don’t post many of my failed attempts, unless I want to make a point.  I don’t show off my botched tries at using a new medium.  But I don’t always only show my favorites.  And I don’t tear the bad ones out of my journals and hide them.  It’s all a part of my journey.

What about the inner critic?

I do fight with my inner critic and use lots of super-duper-magic-mojo-voodoo-stuff against that whiner.  But that’s just a game, really.

Nope, the real fear comes from that place inside that knows that being an artist is about wearing your heart on your sleeve.  It’s about being brave enough to take some thing from the inside of you and putting right out here on the outside.  It doesn’t matter if you blog about it or have an art show or whatever.  Just the act of creating something out here in the physical world, that was once inside your mind’s eye somewhere, is really an act of turning yourself inside out for someone else to see.

As I’ve been thinking through this, pondering this whole idea, you know what I realized?  First of all, I’m not as much of an introvert as I like to think.  I know, hard to believe.  I like blogging and talking with people over the interwebs because it feels safer somehow.  Quieter, more on my terms.

I also realized that maybe, just maybe, the fear does not have nearly as much a hold on me as I once thought.  Maybe I’m a bit braver than I realized.

And in realizing that, I realize that those smaller parts that I thought were really the fear, the shyness about trying new techniques and colors and so forth, those parts are so not important.  Those things are just these tiny little things that I can just stomp right out.  My art can be truly free from such inconsequential little bits of nothing.  Because without even knowing it, I conquered the real deal.

I found out that my soul has wings, and I can fly.