How to critique art: especially your own

Begin with these questions about the your inspirations and 

willingness to take risks:

Because art is a language of evolving new meanings from old ones—

individually as well as culturally:  

Am I repeating what has already been said?

Because we do not create information so much as it creates us:  

Am I dealing with more than what I know?

Because the first requirement of taking a risk is being willing to fail:  

Do I see what is before me—

not what I think I see or want to see?

Next ask these questions about your technique.

Because material is the work’s first identity and mastering technique 

protects the content, or meaning, of your work: 

Do I choose a material to match the form of my meaning?

Because the vocabulary of sight is composition, harmony, 

proportion, light, color, line, texture, mass, motion: 

Is my doing the work a conversation, or a monologue?

Because physical presence is a form of power: 

Does my body read my art as metaphoric space 

or actual space? 

Then, ask these questions about the consequences of  making art.

Because the viewer activates the thing perceived: 

Do I complicate the image and therefore slow the revelation?

Because all visual art is a form of abstraction and interpretation,

and is therefore political: 

Are my art choices describing a world that I, as the maker, promote?

Because you will not be available to explain 

or defend your work out in the world:  

Do I allow the work the succeed or fail on its own merits 

in the eyes of others?

The images illustrating these questions are oracle cards from my Journey Oracle deck.  Enjoy the story of how they were painted by reading about "the journey of the Oracle."