A Certain Insecurity

My studio table is often littered with odd bits like this bowl full o' heads. I've been doing lots of collage work of late; often worry that I'm "loosing it", but then I think better and plow ahead...
I suppose- no, I KNOW!- that's a universal artist problem: insecurity. I try not to care too much. Really, what can you do; people either like your work and "get it" or not/ And trying to explain (art) work to people not attuned is hopeless. Hopeless.
I have always subscribed to the idea that you do work to please yourself and the devil take the rest. This is the only healthy response. Nothing in the universe is more depressing and dead ended than an artist thinking to make work to please an audience. If you do a landscape, they'll want a still life. make a red painting and they'll want it in blue. Who can work like that? And to worry about "good" and "bad" is to lose the day before it's even begun. Believe me, the artists (and writers and musicians and whatevers!) that worry about whether their work is good or bad are never going to do anything. They're paralyzed by fear; that's awful and soul-crushing. This is (partly) why my mantra is more. Just "more". Make art. Make more art. The good and the bad will sort themselves out. (Besides, plenty of really bad artists go places because they have confidence in themselves. Often waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more confidence than the really good- but insecure!- artists. Trust me on that.

(Another table shot). So why is this question on my mind? Because since I damaged my eye, I wonder if my eye is so connected to my brain and my art center and my hand/eye that my work is "off" (like bad meat). I don't really believe that, but I can't help at times but feel insecure because it's just so much harder for me to do things. I couldn't collage for a long time as I just had so much trouble cutting up tiny bits of paper. Then I just sort of forged ahead. I also keep working so as to not sit around worrying about whether what I'm doing is any good.

And as I hinted at before, this sort of un-confidence is very unlike me. What's a woman to do? I keep making art, good, bad or indifferent. I think I'd really be nuts if I didn't make art. I am also experimenting with new things, like using photographs and I still need to start messing around with my video camera. I have several things in mind for that. Always I have ideas! May not be able to execute them as effectively as I'd like, but the ideas keep coming...