When they painted a bison on the wall, they had no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it. I liked that it was attempting to encourage people, me, to make art despite the uncertainty involved. It is still challenging for some clients to try to think and express themselves through the art, no matter what directive you give them. He had witnessed the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars first hand, and had survived two almost-fatal illnesses.

Today these similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity -- audience, critics, economics, trivia -- in a self-conscious world. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much. As suggested by art historian Jacquelyn Yvonne White, this painting might symbolize Varo’s relationship with her own father, the patriarchal head of her family. These works comment on the controversial use of the electric chair in the US in the 1960s, painting a stark yet poignant image of death at the hands of the state. So concerned with ceaselessly skirmishing over whether what they do is or isn’t art, many recent artists, one begins to sense, have simply lost touch with the full palette of emotions with which art is capable of being inflected, with the pigment of fear having arguably dried up the most.The paralysis has affected my confidence and belief not only in my own abilities but also in the field I work in. Obviously, the cave artists knew the bison existed and that it was possible to create a likeness of the animal using pigments.

It recognises that creating art is different to other “jobs” in that, if you do it properly, you put yourself on display at the same time as your work. When he raised David's discovery from an expression of self-doubt to a simple observation of reality, uncertainty became an asset. It starts out strong, very strong, and then falls apart in a semantic entanglement of mixed metaphors and pseudo philosophy that spends a lot of words saying very little. I am not an expert on art books, but from my own limited reading, I would say that if you want to read a book about making art in the real world, you should read Handiwork by Sara Baume.Anxiety is now the dominant emotional experience of our time, precisely for this reason: anything and everything is on show, for sale and attainable, but (for too many people) perpetually withheld, out of reach. The great majority of it is pretentious nonsense, obvious advice like "don't worry about what other people think of your art! When I look at some of the pieces that cost thousands — maybe even millions — of dollars for what they did, it encourages me to go home and paint. Sometimes the emotions are expressed unexpectedly or naturally arise from a directive that is not directly about feelings.

Varo’s painting of a woman discarding the head of her father represents her liberation from the patriarchal structures that she was born into. However, sometimes the idea of drawing or painting feelings can be really challenging for client who aren’t used to thinking about their emotions in the language of color or metaphor (or who aren’t used to paying attention to their feelings at all). His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on.PERFECTION The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. But its also advice easily gleaned from the art blogosphere, and reads as something akin to shallow pop psychology articles. This two hour seminar explores some of the key philosophical issues raised by anxiety and by artistic treatments of mood and emotion. In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it you best shot-- and thereby GUARANTEEING that it will not make you happy. At any point along that path, your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits — without being trapped by it.