The best books to assist and inspire artists and creatives

This is by far the most comprehensive practical guide to being a working artist. I have taught a professional practice course for undergraduate art majors for decades. When I first started teaching this course, I cobbled together chapters from books and articles from everywhere to give the students the information I thought they needed. In 2009, the first edition of this book came out, and it immediately became the textbook for my class.

It really walks you through what happens in the art world and how to navigate finding a gallery or writing for a grant. It also has quotes from people in the field that are helpful. I recommend this book whenever someone wants to know how to get their career started, needs guidance on a contract, or just wants to take their career seriously and to the next level. 

I first read this book as an angsty artist in college. It was as if the Universe sent me a gift that I needed precisely when I needed it. Rilke–an older/wiser poet, wrote the 10 letters in the book to a young Franz Kappus–a budding/insecure poet. All artists suffer from insecurity, and Kappus wants to know if his poems are good and what he should do.

We all want to do Important and Good work (with capital I’s and G’s). Rilke gently and masterfully steers Kappus to understand that true art is a process and involves every aspect of an artist’s life, that it is often a lonely endeavor but worth it for so many reasons. I felt as if Rilke was speaking to me–as a loving grandfather–with words of encouragement, but also in truth. Nothing was sugar-coated, but I so related and wanted to be the wise creator that Rilke had become. 

Bell Hooks is a force! I was introduced to her work through women’s studies classes and loved how she saw the world and presented cultural critiques. This book really helped me look outside the lens of male Eurocentric art history. A series of essays, each one covering an artist, topic, or theory.

It’s been a while since I’ve reread any of them, but I remember that this is the book that helped me dive deeper into Carrie Mae Weems's photography–which I admire greatly. It had me contemplating the point of surrounding ourselves with beauty–and how people who have been told to abandon cultural objects of beauty can seek to find objects that truly heal and sustain our lives.

Perhaps the most influential essay to me was the one that outlined how male creatives were given the luxury of time and space to find and develop their practices and that women creatives should seek and demand the same for their own enrichment and pursuits. 

I didn’t love this entire book from cover to cover, but what I did love, I loved deeply. It contemplates what indeed makes an artist an artist, ruminating on a variety of art makers–from Bonnard to Yoko Ono to Bob Ross to Eve Hesse and Sol LeWitt.

LeWitt’s letter to Eve is something that is seared into my brain. There’s profanity in it, so I won’t repeat any of it here, but it struck me to my core; my whole body agreed with his sentiment. Kimmelman is a skilled writer (duh, he was a New York Times art critic), and he manages to tell intimate stories of how things came to be, why we look at things the way we do, why we collect or want things–including lightbulbs.

It validated the idea that artists need to find the thing they are passionate about, trust that, and follow any and everything to its logical conclusion. 

I love this book. It taught me where colors come from. I had always heard that, at one point, Ultramarine was the most expensive pigment. Reading this taught me why, as well as why other pigments were/are so expensive.

The fact that Indian Yellow may or may not come from the urine of cows that are fed only mango leaves (in the country of India) was also discussed in the book. Finlay did her homework–traveling around the world–and then magically wove all the knowledge into truly interesting stories. I share tidbits and stories from this book constantly–do you know you are drinking bugs if you drink Campari? Well, you are. You certainly are.