David Bayles Quotes

#1. Well, David Bayles, to be exact - who began piano studies with a Master. After a few months' practice, David lamented to his teacher, "But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers." To which the Master replied, "What makes you think that ever changes?

David Bayles

#2. It's a simple premise: follow the leads that arise from contact with the work itself, and your technical, emotional and intellectual pathway becomes clear.

David Bayles

#3. Computers are useless - all they can give you are answers. - Pablo Picasso

David Bayles

#4. To the artist, all problems of art appear uniquely personal. Well, that's understandable enough, given that not many other activities routinely call one's basic self-worth into question.

David Bayles

#5. To see things is to enhance your sense of wonder both for the singular pattern of your own experience, and for the meta-patterns that shape all experience.

David Bayles

#6. Consider that if artist equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all!

David Bayles

#7. There's generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artist's work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.

David Bayles

#8. Between the initial idea and the finished piece lies a gulf we can see across, but never fully chart. The truly special moments in artmaking lie in those moments when concept is converted to reality - those moments when the gulf is being crossed.

David Bayles

#9. At any point along that path, your job as an artist is to push craft to its limits - without being trapped by it. The trap is perfection: unless your work continually generates new and unresolved issues, there's no reason for your next work to be any different from the last.

David Bayles

#10. Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.

David Bayles

#11. When you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes.

David Bayles

#12. The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly - but only in ever-increasing scale.

David Bayles

#13. Training prepares you for a job; an education prepares you for life.

David Bayles

#14. It's been a tough century for modesty, craftsmanship and tenderness.

David Bayles

#15. Tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

David Bayles

#16. Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.

David Bayles

#17. Fears about artmaking fall into two families: fears about yourself and fears about your reception by others.

David Bayles

#18. We have to construct communities of artists because they don't naturally exist in our culture.

David Bayles

#19. Vision, Uncertainty, and Knowledge of Materials are inevitabilities that all artists must acknowledge and learn from: vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue.

David Bayles

#20. For the artisan, craft is an end in itself. For you, the artist, craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.

David Bayles

#21. The only work really worth doing - the only work you can do convincingly - is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

David Bayles

#22. Talent may get someone off the starting blocks faster, but without a sense of direction or a goal to strive for, it won't count for much

David Bayles

#23. To the viewer, who has little emotional investment in how the work gets done, art made primarily to display technical virtuosity is often beautiful, striking, elegant ... and vacant.

David Bayles

#24. Most of us spend most of our time in other peoples' worlds - working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment - and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn't quite ring true.

David Bayles

#25. Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.

David Bayles

#26. Even talent is rarely distinguishable, over the long run, from perseverance and lots of hard work.

David Bayles

#27. In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.

David Bayles

#28. As Adam Gopnik remarked in The New Yorker, "Post-modernist art is, above all, post-audience art." In

David Bayles

#29. Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art

David Bayles

#30. ART IS MADE BY ORDINARY PEOPLE. Creatures having only virtues can hardly be imagined making art. It's difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes. Or Batman throwing pots. The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art.

David Bayles

#31. Fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work, while fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work.

David Bayles

#32. As far as most people are concerned, art may be acceptable as a profession, but certainly not as an occupation.

David Bayles

#33. THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit. It's a genuine tragedy. Worse yet, it's an unnecessary tragedy. After all, artists who continue and artists who quit share an immense field of common emotional

David Bayles

#34. We have a language that reflects how we learn to paint, but not how we learn to paint our paintings. How do you describe the [reader to place words here] that changes when craft swells into art?

David Bayles

#35. The seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections are your guides - valuable, objective, non-judgmental guides to matters you need to reconsider or develop further.

David Bayles

#36. Art is human. Error is human. Art is error.

David Bayles

#37. And while a hundred civilizations have prospered (sometimes for centuries) without computers or windmills or even the wheel, none have survived even a few generations without art.

David Bayles

#38. The hardest part of art-making is living your life in such a way that your work gets done-over and over-and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful.

David Bayles

#39. Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution - and it should be.

David Bayles

#40. Nature places a simple constraint on those who leave the flock to go their own way: they get eaten. In society it's a bit more complicated. Nonetheless the admonition stands: avoiding the unknown has considerable survival value. Society, nature, and artmaking tend to produce guarded creatures.

David Bayles

#41. We do not long remember those artists who followed the rules more diligently than anyone else. We remember those who made the art from which the "rules" inevitably follow.

David Bayles

#42. Only those who commit to following their own artistic path can look back and see this issue in clear perspective: the real question about acceptance is not whether your work will be viewed as art, but whether it will be viewed as your art. APPROVAL

David Bayles