I recently thumbed through my copy of the book, Art and Fear again. Authors David Bayles and Ted Orland offer artists one of the best recourses I’ve found for advice on continuing a healthy art practice.

In one of the books most famous sections (noted by bloggers like Jason Kottke) the authors share this parable on perfection:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. 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. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay (29).

It’s pointless to strive for perfection since humans, by nature, are imperfect. Why should we expect something different from our art? In fact, imperfection is an important ingredient in art. “Ansel Adams, never one to mistake precision for perfection, often recalled the old adage that “the perfect is the enemy of the good…’”

It is also fruitless for us to force ourselves to understand our art practice outside of the actual work itself. You come to make what you make by making it. Well, you might say, I haven’t any talent. Hogwash. “Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these: Who cares? Who would know? and What difference would it make? And the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody, and None.”

We sometimes put a lot of unnecessary pressure on ourselves to fit a mold, any kind of mold. But art is too complex, too big and too rich to be labeled or constrained.

Bayles and Orland are not saying we ought to take our artmaking or the ideas behind it lightly.  On the contrary.  As we work, we should keep asking ourselves why our art matters. “In making art you declare what is important (108).”

Question yourself about your art practice, locate in it what is most important to you—careful always that the questioning comes through the making.