Thursday, August 28, 2003
The artists I've known who have backed away from the artist life did so because they could not - for any number of legitimate reasons - give their all to it. What they share in common is the fact that they did for a time "give their all." This is very difficult to explain to those people who go through life wishing they could be artists. They wandered around the book department at Pearl Arts & Crafts looking for magic rather than instruction & inspiration.
Even if art is an avocation, one must make time for it, & within that time give one's all. A talented, trained "amateur," working within traditional modes, is capable of reaching a stage of development where "amateur" has little meaning. The pictorial watercolor scene is one example of this. So are photography & writing. Even little theater has its semi-professionals. Only in the realms of music & dance performance, public sculpture, & in experimental art does one find fairly distinct borders. Sometimes it's just a matter of chutzpah; marketing oneself as a "professional." Marketing is business. The purveyors of arts & crafts "how to" videos & books are mostly "professional amateurs" dispensing technique shortcuts. The late Bob Ross was a master at covering all the angles for making money at this.
If one is truly an "artist" at heart, one always makes time - a little or a lot, frequently or less so - to make some sort of art. Saying one has "no time to make art" as an excuse is like claiming to have no time to eat. One manages to eat all the same.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Even if art is an avocation, one must make time for it, & within that time give one's all. A talented, trained "amateur," working within traditional modes, is capable of reaching a stage of development where "amateur" has little meaning. The pictorial watercolor scene is one example of this. So are photography & writing. Even little theater has its semi-professionals. Only in the realms of music & dance performance, public sculpture, & in experimental art does one find fairly distinct borders. Sometimes it's just a matter of chutzpah; marketing oneself as a "professional." Marketing is business. The purveyors of arts & crafts "how to" videos & books are mostly "professional amateurs" dispensing technique shortcuts. The late Bob Ross was a master at covering all the angles for making money at this.
If one is truly an "artist" at heart, one always makes time - a little or a lot, frequently or less so - to make some sort of art. Saying one has "no time to make art" as an excuse is like claiming to have no time to eat. One manages to eat all the same.
