I didn't know you were afraid to paint

Three Squares

11 x 14

Mixed Media

We were in the car, driving towards the city (Chicago) and my husband said, 

"I read your blog." 

"Oh yeah?"

"I didn't know you were afraid to paint, " he said.

I am, sometimes. And I know I'm not alone. Just go to the bookstore and see all the books written to help us overcome Resistance.*

Why the fear? Exposure. When we make our marks visible on paper or any other solid surface, we begin to peel away the layers of domestic obedience and dig down into the subterranean levels of our consciousness. We become denizens of our souls. 

I believe abstract and non-objective artists suffer from this fear more than representational artists. Realism, by definition, is universally understood and accepted. When we are born into this reality, we make a subconscious agreement to see "reality" the same way. 

Abstract and non-objective artists break away from this agreement and attempt to visualize an inner reality. When it's successful, the audience is drawn to the work and some form of non-verbal communication takes place. 

In John O'Donohue's book; To Bless The Space Between Us, he writes; 

"When we engage creatively, we depart from the fixed world of daily routine and grounded facts. We enter into a kind of "genesis foyer," where something that not yet is might begin to edge its way from silence into word, from the invisible into form."

For me the best three books written on overcoming this deer in the headlights fear, are: Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland; The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and Creative Authenticity by Ian Roberts

* Steven Pressfield's word for fear.