If artists and writers are honest however, we will tell you that often we have no idea what we are doing. Most of us rely on a combination of skills, experience and sheer determination to realize a painting or piece of writing. We experiment. We tinker. We “see what happens”. Photographer Sally Mann calls hers a “magpie aesthetic,” scavenging whatever happens to be around to capture with her camera.

In between breakthroughs of semi-brilliance in the studio, artists move between doubt and fear most of their lives. Like a drug, making art can take us on a magic carpet ride one minute and thrown overboard, gripping the fringes the next.

I began way too teenage-young stealing my sister’s Parliaments at fourteen and making myself power through coughs in the locked bathroom until I could smoothly get through a cigarette with the “cool” I was after. By the time I reached young adulthood, everyone I knew smoked.