A post I've wanted to write for a long time and something I read about a lot is that of the myths of being an artist versus the realities. No, we don't all cut off one ear to sacrifice to our craft and that has been turned into more fiction than fact anyway about Van Gogh. The world loves and hates artists - loves to envy our creativity and inspiration (more myths, but who knew) and hates us for our creativity and inspiration.
Over the years I've always dreaded the blocks to my own creative powers, thinking I must not be a 'real' artist or I must lack something in the departments of creativity or inspiration because I feel incapable of working at times. It's either a block to come up with an idea or a block to actually start painting or a block suddenly while a painting is in progress. The fear is overpowering, at least when I didn't know where it came from. With all the current research, writings and shared wisdom of many artists, thinkers, psychologists, writers, etc. it now turns out that these fears are all actually part of the territory or being creative and not just the domain of artists (in this case artists for me means painters but applies to all the arts).
I'm going to talk in future posts about some of the myths from my own perspective.
