Aphorisms for Artists New Year's Resolution Sale
Enter NEWYEAR2023 at checkout for 10% off this studio essential.
If you’re like most modern humans you’re sensitive to the turning of the calendar year, bringing with it thoughts of how to better use the coming twelve months. On this occasion, if you’re an artist or know someone who is, I recommend adding Aphorisms for Artists by Walter Darby Bannard to your studio or theirs. Today I opened up the book to this gem:
Don’t replicate your art, replicate yourself.
When you have made a good painting it is tempting to start a new painting in the same mode. But things change. What you have brought over from the first painting may not be in sync with what is happening in the new painting.
Try starting not with the visible forms of the successful picture, but with a memory of the process, what your attitude was, what you were thinking and feeling.
The new picture will not end up looking like the earlier one, but it may end up better.
Endorsements for the title continue to roll in, most recently from photographer and poet Harry Newman:
Darby Bannard’s insightful, resonant thoughts on art and art-making—though intended mainly for painters, perhaps—are just as valuable to me as a poet and photographer. We all need reminding at times of what matters, creatively, intellectually, professionally, and that is what Aphorisms for Artists does on page after page. It’s grounding, bracing, reassuring, and continually inspiring. And, also, funny. I found myself laughing out loud reading it, which rarely happens in art-related writing. Another reminder and probably worth getting for that reason alone.
Worth getting, and I’ve made the getting a bit easier for the first week of 2023. Use checkout code NEWYEAR2023 for 10% off the title in the Dissident Muse store from now through the end of the day on January 8.
All best to you in the coming year, and may your studio be a place of light.
Darby Bannard's aphorisms may be ideally suited for creative types, but they're also excellent reading for non-creative types who happen to appreciate good art.