The Soul of an Artist - Robert Fritz
My First Known Drawing
I Think it is a Cow
Quite a few people sent me a copy of this quote by Robert Fritz and I want to share it with you. Fritz is the author of many books including The Path of Least Resistance and Creating.. Both titles have influenced a lot of what went into the Heartstorming Philosophy. This is an excerpt.
Then there's the soul of the artist. First it must be revealed that artists are by nature, insecure. It comes with the territory. They are always ready to enter into unexplored territories in which many of the rules that create certainly are absent. They cannot always rely on the past triumphs or past technique. They must be open with themselves to a point that is truly vulnerable by virtue of being so exposed. Now that doesn't mean they are insecure as people. Often they are very secure on the personal level. But there is something about the work of an artist that puts you in an uneasy position. You must rech into yourself deeper and deeper as you mature as an artist. You've said the most obvious things, and not that's not enough. And, even if no one else knows, even if you are contantly inundated with public praise, if you didn't reach that height you were going for, if you didn't penetrate to that deeper core, you feel that you let yourself down. If you are an artist reading this, you may have felt alone or neurotic or just weird. But you aren't. You just have a sould that is restless, dissatisfied with the ordinary. This is not only true of of the fine artists who are doing 'high art.' This is also true of graphic artists, commercial artists, pop musicians, actors, directors, writers with ot without deadlines, successful and struggling. You better get used to it, for that's the artist's soul that is nagging at you saying, "Okay. That last thing was okay. But you know, there;s this idea you could do next..." And you may think, "What's wrong with me that I am never fine with it all?" The answer is NOTHING IS WRONG WITH YOU. You happen to have a soul of an artist, that's all. It comes with the territory, and anyway, you didn't go into the arts for the money, or the praise, or the glamour, or the nightlife, or the power, of the love and esteem of others. Many artists have all that, and yet, if you looked into their minds and hearts, you'd see them trying to sort out what to do next, and will it be any good, and how can they can they reach beyond that standart?