Art is two parts agency and one part inner heat. The artist loves going down rabbit holes, working toward and against something at the same time, tra… - Jerry Saltz

But doubt is a sign of faith: it tests and humbles you, allows newness into your life. Best of all, doubt banishes the stifling effect of certainty. Certainty kills curiosity and change.

At the same time, art cannot be understood in terms of purpose. As the sculptor Charles Ray has said, art is “for absolutely nothing.” To make, or experience, art is to enter a kind of free zone; it slows us down, places us in some epistemological estuary, takes us into the wild. We make art from our flaws, fragilities, perversities, from our need to communicate or be entertained or stave off death, to create our own mating dances, to deliver our own children, to mourn. Art is bigger than mere subject matter. It is as big as life.

For now, make something, learn something, and move on. Or you’ll be buried waist-deep in the big muddy of perfectionism.