Sometimes there is nothing more terrifying to an artist then beginning a new painting and staring at a blank canvas. \u00a0Something makes us freeze in our tracks at the thought of beginning something new on something so blank.<\/p>\n
Many artists sit and stare for hours and days or even months, almost paralyzed with the fear of putting paint onto the canvas. \u00a0I must say, that this has happened to me many times, and almost at every beginning of a new painting.<\/p>\n
Although I’ve worked a piece of art\u00a0all out as a composition to get it on canvas brings fear. \u00a0Fear of failure, fear of not doing a good job, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, it all paralyzes an artist. \u00a0Even when doing a series, although I’ve done them before, all new pieces bring that same feeling.<\/p>\n
But I follow in great footsteps. \u00a0Van Gogh once said “You don\u2019t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, \u2018You can\u2019t do a thing\u2019. […] but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can\u2019t\u2019 once and for all.<\/em>” \u00a0We all somehow begin with that first stroke, and that is when it all fades and the painting begins. \u00a0Richard Diebenkorn, a 20th-century\u00a0American painter, said this about\u00a0getting started, “What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.<\/em>”<\/p>\n And so it begins, not getting started is the actual failure, the\u00a0dialogue as we proceed into the painting to the finished\u00a0piece breaks the fear of the blank canvas. \u00a0All we need to do is just start painting.<\/p>\n