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An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.

Eric Maisel

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Eric Maisel
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 14
Author
Playwright
Psychologist
Teacher
The Bronx
New York City
Anxiety
Afraid
Choose
Dead
Water
Hallmark
Artist
Halt
Inability
Anxious

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Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.
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Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?
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All space is space in which to create.
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By 'expecting nothing' you are not 'giving up.' Far from it! You are making a decision to focus on what needs to be done rather than on outcomes.
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The artist, who must venture into the studio and risk there, and then venture into the marketplace and risk again, is obliged to learn how her defences work, so that she can drop and raise her guard instantly.
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The artist... may suppose that ideas are his chief currency but unless he is also attuned to feelings, in life and in art, he will not move his fellow human beings.
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Make creativity your religion... because creating is soulful work.
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An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.
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Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.
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A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness.
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Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?
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The artist must possess at least as much conviction as does his enemy, the dogmatic, mealy-mouthed, anti-art bigot.
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Boredom is the thing that regularly arrives between excitements and episodes of meaning: it is as natural as the tides, and in it an artist can drown.
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The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace - and even whole-being rejuvenation - by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky.
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Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.
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Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.
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Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.
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A long, deep breath is the equivalent of a full stop and the key to centering.
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Remind yourself of the value of detaching from work that's out of your hands and committing to new work that wants to be born.
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Talent is so loaded a word, so full to the brim with meanings, that an artist might be wise to forget about it altogether and just keep on working.
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