The saddest thing in art is when an artist is debilitated unfruitful by the ruling of an over-grown Inner Critic.

It can happen to many great artists, and not great artists, and to people who yearn to be artists but never quite get there. The formula is simple: the inner critic intervenes and the artist becomes too scared to produce anymore.

Sounds silly when we say it in the cold light of a blog but you would be surprised how often it happens.

A bad painting is better than no painting.

I believe so anyway, because you see from a ‘bad’ painting can come forth a better one. We learn from our mistakes, improve and there is actually much weighty truth behind the old teacher maxim: “practise makes perfect.” Or much better, anyway!

The stench of cheap acrylic paint is better than the smell of moldy carpet.

The sound of neighbours criticizing to each other, “I wish she’d stop singing so bloody much” is better than the constant humming of a fridge.

And humming, a human humming, before they sing, is much nicer than the fridge’s hum. Yes a fridge can hum for longer than the human, without taking a breath but last time I checked Fisher and Paykel weren’t installing souls in fridges.

The only thing sadder than producing a terrible novel is not producing one at all. The only thing sadder than producing a picture that people snigger at is not producing one  at all.

Too scared to try? It’s more scary to not try than to fail. And besides, practise makes perfect (or better) anyway …