Pen Hanley's Blog

In the arms of the angels: How To Be An Artist and On Connection

Courage and the imagination

‘Every good work of art has courage in it somewhere,’ writes Jerry Saltz in his How To Be An Artist (Hachette, 2022). He also claims that ‘Courage is a desperate gamble that will place you in the arms of the angels.’ (p. 81)

Is the concept of courage relevant when we’re thinking about making art? In a world where we’re being sabotaged daily with messages telling us not to, telling us to consume instead, in a world where the manipulators of marketing know precisely how to best sow the seeds of self-doubt in order to sell more of their clients’ products, yes: relying on our own resources to see what sort of art we can make does take courage.

Jerry Saltz was a long distance truck driver who never wrote a word until he was nearly forty. Einstein famously told us that ‘imagination is more important than knowledge.’ Saltz writes, ‘Creativity is what you do with your imagination.’ He advises us to ‘write down your flights of fancy, your moments of wonder and fear, your dreams and delusions of grandeur. Then put them to work.

‘Make the imagination your compass star.’ (p. 5)

Recently I bought two books at Canberra’s wonderful Portrait gallery shop, The Curatoreum https://www.thecuratoreum.com/ Jerry Katz’s one above and English poet Kae Tempest’s On Connection (Faber, 2022). They’re both slim little books filled with riches for the heart and intellect. I mention one of my favourite Tempest poems in this blog: https://tinyurl.com/penhanleywordpress17jan

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