Capítulo 1
The Artist's Calling: Where Courage Meets Creation
Art is a journey that begins with a single mark, yet it has the power to transform not only a canvas but also the artist who creates it. Jerry Saltz's "How to Be an Artist" isn't just another how-to manual-it's a manifesto for creative courage that has resonated with everyone from established gallery artists to weekend painters. Since its publication, the book has become a staple on the bookshelves of creative professionals worldwide, with celebrities like Lena Dunham and David Byrne citing it as essential reading. What makes this slim volume so powerful is Saltz's refusal to mystify the creative process. Instead, he offers something far more valuable: permission to begin, to fail, to persist, and ultimately to create something uniquely yours in a world that desperately needs authentic voices.
Capítulo 2
Embracing Your Amateur Status
We all start as amateurs-every single one of us. Even Picasso was once a child making his first marks on paper. The journey begins not with mastery but with acknowledging your inexperience while embracing the creative process anyway. The fear of humiliation and exposure that comes with making art is universal. Your mind will race with doubts: "None of this is any good. It makes no sense." But here's the liberating truth: art doesn't need to make sense. Like birdsong, it's made of patterns and emotional shifts that resist direct translation.
Every artwork you create is a culturescape of you-your memories, neuroses, and ambitions all woven together. The goal isn't to be "good" but to be authentic. Paradoxically, the faster your work makes immediate sense to viewers, the faster they'll lose interest and move on.
Your imagination is your greatest asset-an endless resource that's always present. It functions as a lens that enlarges life and animates your ocean of past, present, and future forms. As William Blake said, "The imagination is not a state. It is human existence itself." Your creativity is what you do with this imagination-capturing your flights of fancy and putting them to work.
Don't be confined by others' definitions of skill or beauty. Drawing within lines is for babies; making sure things add up is for accountants. Technical proficiency matters only in what you do with it. Tell your own story, but understand that authenticity doesn't automatically entitle you to applause-you must earn an audience through work that resonates beyond yourself.
Artists often feel led by something outside themselves-what we might call art's "otherness." While we choose styles and materials, what we create isn't entirely conscious choice. Bob Dylan captured this sensation perfectly: "It's like a ghost is writing, except the ghost picked me to write the song." Rather than letting this unsettle you, learn to trust this mysterious process.
Capítulo 3
Beginning the Creative Journey
The most effective way to start making art is to begin as soon as you wake up, or at least within the first two hours of your day. This timing helps you dodge the pesky demons of daily life that inevitably arise. If you wait too long-say, four hours-these demons will surely take you down. For those who can only create after work or after the kids are in bed, give yourself ninety minutes to rest and contemplate before starting. Your body and mind will thank you for this preparation.
If drawing intimidates you, start with simple marks. Tell yourself you're just playing, experimenting, seeing what looks like what. Remember that if you can write, you already know how to draw-your handwriting and doodles are forms of drawing. While making marks, pay attention to the physical feedback from your body-your hand, wrist, arm, eyes, even the smell and touch of materials. Notice how long marks extend before lifting the pencil. Do you lift or just cut back?
Try wrapping fingers in fabric to change your touch; use your non-dominant hand; put plugs in your ears. Pay attention to everything you experience-not judging good or bad, but noticing what feels useful, pleasurable, strange, or lucky. Glenn Gould practiced piano with blasting radios and TVs to better feel rather than hear his playing. Hide secrets in your work. Dance with these experiences, and soon you'll make up steps, doing visual calypsos all your own.
Carry a sketchbook always. Cover surfaces with marks, thinking about space, shapes, and compositions. Draw on anything-rock, metal, cups, sidewalks. All art is decoration at some level. Draw what's within a square foot of you, then from the opposite side. You're becoming better, even if you don't know it yet.
Capítulo 4
Finding Your Artistic Voice
Imitation is essential to artistic learning-we all begin as copycats, just as writers first learn by copying their favorite authors and musicians start by playing others' compositions. But don't stop there. Pure pastiche leads to predictable art-lite or picturesque kitsch that lacks authentic energy. Topological form and originality go beyond simply mashing styles together. When experimenting with pastiche, focus on the spaces between styles, forms, structures, and your imagination-these gaps are where genuine discovery happens. Consider how Francis Bacon transformed his influences from Velazquez and photography into something uniquely haunting, or how Basquiat combined street art with modernist painting to create his distinctive voice. Keep working until the art becomes genuinely yours, recognizing that this process often takes years of dedicated practice and experimentation.
Your studio-even if it's just a dining table cleared at night-is sacred space that serves multiple functions: an inventor's laboratory for testing new ideas, a teenager's bedroom for uninhibited expression, a mechanic's garage for problem-solving, a seance chamber for connecting with deeper creative forces, a fortress of solitude for uninterrupted focus. Here you're a god responsible for everything-and free from what you don't want. Transform this space into a ritual arena for maximum diversity in minimum space, where you can explore new architectures and follow any idea, no matter how seemingly absurd or impractical. Whether it's a spare corner or an entire warehouse, make it yours.
Get into your body here-breathe deeply, pace the floor, prepare your materials with intention. Develop specific rituals that signal to your brain it's time to create. Leave something unfinished each day to help restart tomorrow-this creates a bridge between sessions and reduces creative block. Your studio's decor bleeds into your imagination, so choose postcards, objects, and reference materials thoughtfully and change them regularly to keep fresh energy flowing. This should be a place without shame or self-judgment, open to surprise and even humiliation, where you're never afraid of silence or failure, where you can sit for hours just looking at your work, not knowing but musing and allowing ideas to percolate.
Every artist develops their own relationship with borders and spatial organization. Picasso's subjects never run off his canvas-figures, faces, and forms fit within the four borders, creating distinctive visual tension through this classical approach that speaks to containment and control. Matisse, his friend and rival, followed no such rules-legs, feet, heads are cropped freely; patterns shoot past edges in a celebration of freedom and continuous space. Study artists across history and styles, from Rauschenberg's combines to Tintoretto's dynamic diagonals, Kahlo's intimate symmetry to Pollock's all-over compositions, identifying their compositional tendencies to understand these fundamental approaches to visual space. Notice how each artist's handling of space reflects their worldview and artistic philosophy.
Capítulo 5
The Art of Thinking Artistically
Art's subjectivity means consensus may recognize certain artists as great, yet your personal reaction might differ-finding Rembrandt "pretty brown" doesn't make you dumb. Like Hamlet, which remains unchanged yet appears different to each viewer and with each viewing, art is paradoxically static yet ever-changing-"an unchanging thing that is never the same." This metaphysical quality should liberate you: stop obsessing over perfection and move forward, knowing your work will continue transforming itself in viewers' eyes.
Looking hard means becoming rapt-transforming yourself into a seeing machine where you're not just observing the sky but reckoning with blue as something beyond itself. Looking openly means accessing new sources of visual interest, giving yourself agency to respond to every millimeter of what you see. This deliberate seeing expands your world and can rescue you from despair, as artist Gaylen Gerber discovered when viewing "shiny plastic furniture" after 9/11 revived his artistic spirit. Train yourself to look deliberately, and you'll understand what Emerson meant by "all things swim and glitter."
Artists communicate like cats-indirectly, placing something between themselves and their audience. Even when making representational work, it's never solely "about" the subject matter. It encompasses materials, techniques, and the artist's worldview. This is why artists hate explaining their work's meaning. Art itself, however, behaves like a dog-messy, expensive, demanding, yet rewarding you with wonder and delight.
Sometimes understanding great art requires persistence. For years, I dismissed Cezanne's work as "apples, choppy mountains, bathers-meh." But I kept returning until suddenly everything changed-I saw the masterful orchestration of planes, subtle shifts in focus, and powerful visual architecture. Now every Cezanne leaves me breathless. If certain artists puzzle you, keep a list and revisit them. Once you break through with one artist, move to another, continually expanding your vision as a seeing machine.
Capítulo 6
Navigating the Art World Ecosystem
The art world can feel like a snake pit-a complex social ecosystem of galleries, critics, collectors, and fellow artists that requires strategic navigation. Courage can't be measured but exists in every good artwork. Put faith in your art to stave off cynicism and clear your path forward. Showing work publicly, seeking guidance, applying for opportunities-all require tremendous faith. Consider Alice Neel making rough-hewn portraits in Harlem when no one appreciated them, Alex Katz creating big flat figurative paintings amid abstract expressionism, or Cy Twombly deploying erratic scrawls. Their belief allowed their art to follow its intuitive logic.
Don't limit yourself by presenting as just one type of maker. You're an artist-a material poet, as Rauschenberg might say when he described his combine-assemblages as "poetry." The insular art world has traditionally looked down on medium-specific creators, but we're now in an electric moment when many artists don't define themselves by medium at all. They say multimedia, all media, or simply "artist," leaving others to figure it out.
Graduate school can be valuable for building peer relationships and developing shared languages, but it's also financially risky. Most programs are expensive, and the career bump from attending prestigious schools typically lasts only eighteen months while the debt remains. If you can attend a good program at a reasonable price, work hard and get everything you can from it. If school isn't an option, don't worry-make the world your syllabus: the options are endless, and the price is right.
Even if introverted, spend time with other artists your age. Artists must commune with their kind to survive. These relationships form networks of love and forgiveness that protect against insecurity, isolation, grandiosity, and arrogance. These are the people you'll stay up late with, learn from, comfort, fight with, and love-they'll give you strength to work through pain. Within your coven, protect one another, especially the weakest member. After all, someone might think that's you.
Capítulo 7
Surviving the Challenges of Artistic Life
Despite the art world's glamorous veneer, only a tiny fraction of artists get rich from their work. About 95 percent just scrape by, often juggling multiple jobs and living modestly to sustain their practice. Being poor is hard, but artists who maintain strong support networks - including fellow artists, mentors, and understanding family members - live with nimble minds, alive spirits, and growing art. Many successful artists work as teachers, art handlers, or graphic designers to support their practice. I've spent much of my life broke yet never regretted my path, nor have I met artists who regretted their choice, difficult as it can be. As Isak Dinesen wrote in "Babette's Feast," "a great artist, Mesdames, is never poor."
The best definition of success is time-the time to do your work. Most artists start working five days a week for someone else, but as a resourceful artist, you'll eventually figure out how to work just three days, giving you four days for your own art. This might mean living in a smaller apartment, sharing studio space, or foregoing certain luxuries. That's the first measure of success. Some privileged people get there faster through family support or connections, which is unfair, especially for women, artists of color, and artists over forty who often face additional systemic barriers in the art world.
You need just one good dealer who believes in you and will champion your work consistently, five or six serious collectors who buy your work occasionally and follow your development, two or three critics who understand what you're doing and can articulate it to others, and one or two curators who include you in shows and advocate for your work. That's it-twelve people! But you have to put yourself out there strategically, show up at openings even if just to feel inadequate, talk to other wallflowers, and price your work reasonably for your market level. Building these relationships takes time - often years - but they form the foundation of a sustainable career.
Keep artist statements simple and authentic. Write in your own voice, avoid art jargon and abstract oppositions that obscure rather than clarify. Skip trendy academic words like interrogate, reconceptualize, and liminal space - they often mask rather than reveal meaning. You're the best authority on your work, so develop your own theories and explanations rather than quoting philosophers you may only partially understand. Say what you mean directly, even if it seems humble or straightforward. If something sounds pretentious when you read it aloud, don't say it. A clear, honest statement about your work will resonate more than elaborate theoretical constructions.
Remember that persistence often matters more than talent. Many talented artists give up too soon, while less gifted but more determined artists build sustainable careers through consistent effort and strategic relationship building. Stay connected to why you make art in the first place - that authentic drive will sustain you through difficult times.
Capítulo 8
Developing Resilience and Vision
Even someone seemingly unpromising like Jackson Pollock willed himself to newness. Artist Julian Lethbridge says being persistent, obstinate, and determined helps artists outwit-not banish-the inevitable doubts. This drive helps you face emotional headwinds and return to your work. Wanting it takes you from desire to action to living your artistic life.
Envy blinds you and eats you alive, keeping you dwelling on slights and what others have. It distracts your mind, leaving less room for development and honest self-criticism. From envy's fortress, everything that doesn't happen to you becomes someone else's fault. Don't let jealousy define you or make you bitter. "Poor me" can't improve your work. Grow a backbone and get back to creating.
Deadlines come from heaven via hell. They can make you sick with pressure but force you to muster the mettle to work. Since art-making is voluntary, procrastination only harms yourself. Deadlines concentrate your work and prompt unexpected epiphanies. If you don't have one, set one-many famous artists create daily deadlines to keep their work developing. Meet your deadlines. Get it done. It'll change your life.
Grow elephant skin-you'll need it. Even masters faced harsh criticism: Monet was repeatedly rejected, Manet's work called "inconceivably vulgar," Degas questioned on his drawing skills. Critics are wrong every day. Keep your rejection letters and bad reviews as goads to prove wrong. Don't let them define you, but consider whether there might be a grain of truth worth learning from. When criticized, I simply say, "You could be right"-it has a nice double edge.
When your work is panned or ignored, Jim Lewis advises to "strive to make them hate it. If no one hates it, it might not be art." This isn't because offending people is inherently valuable, but because any true artistic gesture will inevitably please some and displease others. Often, the qualities in your work that bother people most are precisely those that should be cultivated and pushed to their extreme.
Capítulo 9
Embracing the Lifelong Journey
While the allure of sudden success is understandable, I advocate loudly for the thirty-year career over the thirty-month one. I want you to be able to do what you love until your dying day. Art reveals its secrets slowly, requiring a lifetime of dedication. My hope is to die working, frustrated, trying new ideas until something finally clicks and gives me that momentary high. The greatest reward comes from the sustained journey, not the overnight sensation.
The notion that having children is "bad for your career" as an artist is absurd. Throughout history, 90 percent of artists have had children-mostly men, for whom it wasn't considered career-limiting. For women, historical exclusion from art education and institutions was the real barrier, not motherhood itself. Laurel Nakadate points out that being a parent is already much like being an artist: living in chaos, multitasking, and experiencing moments of transformative love amid difficulty. Mother-artists become experts at efficiency, emotional resilience, and clarity of purpose.
Picasso's quip that "art is a lie that tells the truth" captures something profound: art changes how we see, remember, and experience the world. Oscar Wilde noted that London's famous fog gained its character only after artists invented it. Raymond Chandler created early-20th-century Los Angeles in our imaginations, while Michelangelo shaped how we envision God creating Adam. Perhaps the world's holy books are powerful simply because they're beautifully written, creating characters people worship and die for.
Artists do not own the meaning of their work. Anyone may experience your art in ways you never intended. Your work about diaspora might be interpreted as commentary on climate change or a nature study. This is actually desirable-it means your work is alive, containing more than just you. If you're lucky, it will remain alive long after you're gone, evolving as more people encounter it.
We're conditioned to think art history is a story of forward progress, but that's wrong. Art changes in stages, shifts, lurches, breaks, and great leaps. Art is less an arrow than a plasma cloud, always with us but never the same. Try this exercise: once yearly, draw a train with twelve cars representing artists you feel connected to. After several years, create one large drawing incorporating all these influences-a streetcar of your desires.
Capítulo 10
The Courage to Create Against All Odds
Radical vulnerability demands more than just opening up - it requires diving headfirst into the unexplored shadows of your creative consciousness, exposing not just your art but your deepest insecurities and hidden truths. This journey often means revealing aspects of yourself that society, family, or even you might judge harshly. You must embrace the possibility of spectacular failure and be willing to pursue ideas that others might dismiss as absurd or inappropriate.
Georgia O'Keeffe's story exemplifies this courage perfectly. Throughout her career, critics repeatedly reduced her groundbreaking abstract work to simplistic anatomical comparisons, labeling her "a painter of female genital organs." Yet O'Keeffe was actually pioneering completely abstract imagery before most of her contemporaries, creating bold, innovative works that transcended literal interpretation. Despite constant criticism and gender-based dismissal, she remained steadfast in her vision, responding to detractors by simply noting it was "a shame to be viewed as silly or girly." Her resilience transformed these criticisms into fuel for even more daring artistic expressions.
The creative journey is fundamentally a learning process. Each day in the studio, at the desk, or in front of the canvas brings new discoveries. Sometimes these revelations are technical breakthroughs; other times, they're humbling reminders of how much we have yet to master. This continuous learning cycle shapes not just our art but our identity - every creation, whether deemed successful or not, adds another layer to who we are as artists and humans.
The 3 a.m. demons are universal companions to all creators, regardless of experience or success. These voices of doubt become more sophisticated over time, armed with an intimate knowledge of our specific insecurities. They whisper about our inadequate credentials, technical limitations, financial constraints, or supposed lack of originality. They're particularly skilled at comparing our rough drafts to others' finished masterpieces. The solution isn't to silence these voices completely - that's impossible. Instead, acknowledge them briefly, then deliberately shift to affirmation: "Yeah, but I'm a fucking genius." This isn't about ego; it's about claiming your right to create despite imperfection.
Remember that the rules of your craft aren't prison bars but tools for liberation. Master them so thoroughly that breaking them becomes purposeful rather than accidental. Study the fundamentals until they become second nature, then use that knowledge to push boundaries and create something truly new.
And yes, make time to dance at least once a year. This isn't just whimsical advice - dance connects us to humanity's oldest creative expressions. It reminds us that art lives in the body as much as the mind, and that joy is as vital to creativity as discipline. Dance while you can, because this physical expression of creativity is a temporary gift, just like life itself.
