The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment. We are paid to take risks, to look silly. Some people like racing car drivers are paid to take risks in a more concrete way. We are paid to take risks in an emotional way.
            The film critic is like a medical examiner. He gets the cadaver on the table, he opens it up, and tries to figure out why it died. The filmmaker is like the pregnant mother who is simply trying nurture this thing. You have to keep the medical examiner out of the delivery room because he will get in there and he will kill that baby.
- Paul Schrader interviewed by Terry Gross on the NPR radio program Fresh Air

The most important creative work is created out of an artist’s imagination. It is an experiment. If all your experiments succeed, you’re not taking enough risks. As an artist, your role is to help us see and understand what we could not see and understand without you. Take us on a journey through the mystery as you understand it. Your understanding, like mine, will be incomplete. All the big questions of life are impossible to answer.

So pour your heart and soul into the work. Don’t worry about the outcome. Quantity over quality. Do lots of experiments. Don’t worry about whether or not others will like it, or it will sell. Probe your boundaries. This is magic; magic won’t enter the work if you are self-critical.

I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.
– Jimi Hendrix

Not many appreciated Walt Whitman’s work at first. The best, most unique work is off-putting at first. It violates our understanding of the way things are or should be. Ultimately, this is the art that changes the way we see things.
      There is a lot of art that I don’t like that is regarded by some, or many, as important or groundbreaking. Fine. It wasn’t made for me. Maybe someday I’ll revisit it, after more life experience, and see that it is, in fact, revelatory. If everyone likes something at first glance it is because it is middle-of-the-road, inoffensive, weak, comfortable. A lot of super-realistic painting reminds us of a photograph and we admire the artist’s skill.  Fine, but unimportant. Art, novels, music that add something to our culture is art that is different from what came before, art that leads us to new understandings in new directions.

Jerry Uelsmann, a former Professor of photography at the University of Florida, now retired, divided some of his classes into two groups. One was graded on quantity and one group on quality. To get an “A” the quantity group had to produce a hundred photos, ninety got a “B”, eighty a “C” and so on. The individuals in the other group just had to produce one photo –- the best photo each was capable of. At the end of the term, all the best grades, all the best photos, came from the quantity group rather the quality group. 

      Why? We learn from our mistakes. That’s certainly a part of it, but there are other reasons quantity is important. If our objective is quantity, we can be more relaxed with each attempt. That makes it easier to get going. If we’re after perfection, failure is highly likely, so motivation is more difficult. As a painter, one of my major challenges is overpainting. I’ve ruined many paintings by not leaving them alone after they were good, but not great. Good is good enough. Start another rather than continue with niggly-piggily little brush strokes in order to try to make the painting better, more realistic. 

      And don’t judge your creative work right after completion. You generally need at least a few days, and maybe a month or two. I throw out most of my paintings, but only after a few months. I find, in the pile of rejects, some of my favorites. Why? They didn’t achieve what I had in mind when I set out, but two months later I don’t remember that initial objective. Two months later, I judge them on their merits. Did a painting capture something deep? Does it offer some special insight? Does it inspire thought?