Secret Place Oil Bar on Panel 15" x 18" $1200 Control, apparently, is not the answer. People who need certainty in their lives are less likely to make art that is risky, subversive, complicated, iffy, suggestive, or spontaneous. What’s really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way. Simply put, making art is chancy­it doesn’t mix well with predictability. Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to you desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding. In the end it all comes down to this: you have choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot­and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice. Art and Fear - David Bayles & Ted Orland To purchase this piece, please contact Viewpoints Gallery. For email, phone, or fax, please click here!