Fear in creative work
Fear shows up pretty often in creative work. The ideas flow freely, the desire to make is a fire, but the fear of sharing our work can stop us in our tracks before we even get halfway through executing the project.
But really, we do want to share our work. Why is it so hard?
It isn’t about showing off
I am willing to bet it is not about ego.
My guess is, that fear of judgment is not at the core of the fear of being seen for many creatives. Wherever the notion came from that artists make work because they need or want validation, I doubt it was an artist who said it. But the idea stuck, and it is often at the core of artists not wanting to “show off.”
Showing up is very different from showing off. Making art and wanting it witnessed is not egotistical.
We humans have made objects, images, marks, and music for thousands of years. Their purposes range from social connection and meaning-making to problem-solving and aesthetic pleasure. Art is relational. It often assumes that another person will eventually encounter it. Wanting to communicate is quite different from wanting approval.
Participation anxiety
“I know how to make the work. I want my work to enter the world, but I am uncertain about what will be required of me once it does. I don’t know how to inhabit the relationships the work might create.”
Could this be true? No doubt it is on some level.
Visibility is the beginning of exchange.
You put an image on the wall or on your website, and the work is now visible. But once someone responds, asks a question, buys something, or wants to know more, a relationship has begun. Suddenly, the artist isn’t simply making and presenting an object. They have to participate, engage, reciprocate.
It might not be stage fright, impostor syndrome, fear of criticism, or fear of failure.
It might be fear of engagement. Are we unsure about how to talk to others about the work? Unsure about the relationships that might begin with an audience or an individual?
What do I say when someone asks about my work? What do they expect from me? How do I explain something I understand intuitively? What if they want a relationship with me as the maker? How do I enter an art community? How do I follow up?
That string of thoughts can make us all squirm.
Perhaps what we fear is not visibility itself, but what visibility asks of us next. Is it fear of being seen, or is it uncertainty—not knowing how to inhabit this new territory?
If fear of judgment were the issue, conventional language might suffice: “Put yourself out there. Don’t worry about what people think.” But if the anxiety comes from not knowing what happens next, courage isn’t really what we need.
We may need orientation, practice, and experience.
As makers, we are comfortable. We have a relationship with materials, ideas, and processes. As artists in the public world, perhaps not so much.
We spend years learning how to become artists and makers, but very little time learning how to become participants.
Crafting conditions to feel safe
“Good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.”
— Austin Kleon, *Show Your Work*
Attachment theory suggests that a secure base can help us feel safe enough to explore and form new connections.
A secure base gives us a sense of felt safety—an environment that is predictable, supportive, and non-threatening.
That secure base could be a studio, a creative community, financial stability, a mentor, or simply the confidence that rejection will not sever our relationship with our art.
Generally, we don’t feel threatened in a small group of trusted friends. We can be ourselves—relaxed and animated, ready to share our perspective or the latest thing we have become passionate about.
If you have been able to develop within a small art community, fabulous! No doubt you value that engagement highly.
In an online world, however, it is easy to remain on the receiving end. You might admire and follow others, learn from them, and enjoy the fact that they share their process, while choosing not to become visible yourself.
Of course, that is a decision each of us is free to make, and there are many reasons someone might choose to remain less visible, including health, caregiving responsibilities, grief, or simply a need for privacy. But if what we actually desire is greater participation, remaining only on the receiving end can eventually become limiting. The conversation remains one-sided.
For a creative community to function well, it needs to provide enough psychological safety for us to take risks and admit mistakes. It needs to be reliably available and responsive rather than punitive. It should encourage exploration and ambitious goal-pursuit and provide a safe haven during setbacks.
On some level, perhaps we can also provide some of this for ourselves. Can we develop a more self-compassionate inner dialogue that allows us to experiment, fail, and try again?
And perhaps community doesn’t have to begin with a group.
Perhaps we can find one person.
Think about expanding your reach in the same way you think about expanding your creative knowledge. Use the same techniques for learning and growing. Be intentional about it.
We each have a window of tolerance at any given moment—a range within which we can remain present and engaged without becoming overwhelmed. We can gently explore the edges of that window without pushing ourselves so far that we shut down or retreat.
Ask yourself: *What small thing can I do right now to expand my reach or connection?*
Find that window. Peek through. Then, when you’re ready, climb through.
What if it’s not a matter of courage, but competence?
With each small step and each successful encounter, we are essentially training ourselves to trust that we will know what to do when the moment arrives.
Begin with low-stakes encounters and work your way outward. A feeling of safety can gradually begin to come from within the interaction rather than requiring the interaction to feel completely safe beforehand. Stay with each step until you begin to develop a level of competence.
Perhaps we don’t simply need courage to become visible.
We need experiences of being received.
Steps toward competence
“You can’t find your voice if you don’t use it.”
— Austin Kleon
**1. Be with your work.**
Ask yourself: Why do I make what I make? What do my material choices say about what matters to me? What am I exploring?
Write about it. Speak it out loud. Record yourself talking—first audio, then video. Become familiar with hearing yourself put words around what you make.
**2. Find a trusted witness.**
Show one person the work and simply notice what happens. What do they ask? Where do you become animated? Where do you struggle to find words? What might you want to clarify about your process or reasons for making the work?
**3. Practice conversation.**
Practice answering a few common questions.
Learn how to describe a piece without explaining it away. Learn how to recognize genuine curiosity and continue a conversation. Practice receiving praise without deflecting it. Learn how to end a conversation gracefully.
**4. Practice reciprocity.**
Learn to turn presentation into conversation.
“What did you notice first?”
“I’m curious what made you ask that.”
And if you’re speaking with a fellow artist:
“Tell me about your work.”
You are no longer performing for an audience. You are participating in an exchange.
**5. Meet unfamiliar people.**
Put yourself in situations where you might meet new acquaintances: an open studio, a gallery opening, an art walk, a workshop, or an artist talk. You don’t have to work the room. One meaningful conversation is enough.
These are not simply acts of courage. They are skills. And skills become more familiar through practice. Once we feel more comfortable navigating these situations, we can begin to imagine ourselves participating in a wider professional context.
Competence creates agency, and agency contributes to felt safety.
Of course, each of these steps requires self-determination.
Perhaps what we are really building is a sense that we have agency in how we enter into relationship with the world around our work.
We can choose when and how to share, how much to explain, which conversations to enter, and when to step away. We can learn the skills that make encounters less unfamiliar without changing who we are in order to participate.
Over time, safety may come not from knowing how others will respond, but from trusting that we can remain ourselves whatever the response.
Perhaps that is what makes creative risk possible: not the absence of fear, but enough trust in ourselves to enter the conversation.
Join Me for Our Next Creative Conversation
We will consider the following topic –
A Safe Place to Begin: Creating the Conditions to Make, Risk, and Share
Creative work asks something vulnerable of us. We follow an idea without knowing where it will lead, make choices without certainty, and eventually consider allowing what we have made to be seen. At each of these thresholds, fear and resistance can quietly enter the process.
What if, instead of asking ourselves to be more courageous, disciplined, or confident, we became curious about the conditions that make creative risk possible?
In this intimate Zoom conversation, we’ll explore the relationship between safety and creativity—what helps us feel free to experiment, what happens when we move beyond what is familiar, and why sharing our work can sometimes feel more difficult than making it. Together, we’ll consider how we might create environments, relationships, and inner practices that offer enough safety to take the next creative step.
This is not about eliminating fear. It is about finding enough ground beneath us to make, risk, and share.
I would love to have you join us!
September 24, 2026 at 1 pm EST.
Rivers Speak in Voltage meetups are available for paid subscribers.
Community members can visit the chat to access the link to register.
Dear Karen, So much of what you wrote here resonates with me. Thank you for putting it into words and reaching more deeply to find a way of explaining something so ambiguous. I've felt this way and verbalized it with close artist friends, the not wanting to have to engage with people whom I didn't trust to receive the work as I hoped it would be received. I hadn't known that others felt that way too. That sense of safety you talk about is so important! You're right about the fact that putting a piece of work out into the world can bring us into a conversation with people we don't yet know about something that feels so intimate and vulnerable to us. Especially online, I find that this takes a huge amount of energy. Sometimes we have it; other times we don't. Thanks for yet another beautifully written and meaningful newsletter!
It is great to have all this to contemplate. You really cover the feelings that artist have from so many angles. I recognize myself in the over explaining and I notice when I’m over explaining I’m not really saying what I’m wanting to say. I would love to be at the zoom meeting, but I won’t be free on that date. Thanks again for your uplifting and insightful work.