“Every child is an
artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up”
~Pablo Picasso
As you may have realised from the title, this post is
dedicated to creativity and art. It's the first one of this topic I have planned (hence the part 1.) I have a bit of a bone to pick with society:
what constitutes as ‘art’?
The definition of Art, taken from Dictionary.com, is the quality, production, expression or
realm, according to aesthetic principles of what is beautiful, appealing, or of
more than ordinary significance. And that sounds like a pretty good description,
doesn’t it? But the problem is...what defines something as beautiful or aesthetically
pleasing?
The problem I find in art is that it’s all up to your own
perception. You may think something is beautiful and an amazing piece of
artwork while someone else may think it’s ugly and useless. And it can go the
opposite way. There are some paintings that I’ve seen that I’ve thought are
gross, weird and just plain ugly but they may be some of the most famous
paintings in the world. For example, I’m no fan of Salvador Dali. However, he’s
well-known and well-liked, so my opinion, it doesn’t really mean much, does it?
So, that’s the problem that I find with art. I may hate it.
But another person may love it. So how can society really determine what is a piece
of artwork or not?
I started thinking this belief when I was at school. I loved
art. It was my favourite subject. I’d go into that classroom every day and be
happy...until the parent/teacher interviews. My mother and I were both told by
my art teacher...that I had no talent at all. None. My brother, though,
apparently did.
Her words crushed me and I stopped doing art. Ended up
leaving her class because why should I waste my time there if the teacher
thought I was no good? But even after I gave up, and believed her words, I had
the one thought in my mind: how can she
say I’m not good when her definition of ‘good’ may be different to someone else’s
definition?
She can’t, really. I may not have been the best art student
at school, but that was when you had to create your work to be complaint with a
list they give you. Just because she may have hated what I did didn’t mean
everyone else would. In fact, when I went into the other art class (there were
two levels, I switched into the simple one) I had one of my artworks, a dream
catcher I created, selected and shown at the Regional Art Gallery. So that
means I’m good, right?
Well, I was good enough for their panel. I still didn’t get
a good mark on it.
Years on, I started to get into art more and more. I started
off with drawings of celebrities, such as Jared
Leto. I used just shades of
grey pencil for it, and I thought there were...somewhat decent. And then
someone suggested I do a drawing of a building. Now, those can be annoyingly
complicated so I had the sudden idea of using just a black pen against a white
page, doing the outline and various types of detail marks. I discovered after I
did it...that I loved drawing like that.
That was actually only a few months ago. And I realised that
not doing art because something a woman once said to me was stupid. I’ve been
enjoying what I’ve been doing and I’ve actually had some really positive
feedback, even on the pieces I thought would fail and look terrible.
So if you’re out there right now and you want to draw,
sculpt, or whatever else...forget about being perfect. Forget about what other
people have said to you in the past and toss away the thoughts of how you won’t
ever be as good as Picasso. Just...start drawing. Start doing whatever. Ignore
the world and just make art.
“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all
means paint, and that voice will be silenced”
~Vincent Van Gogh
The above is my own drawing. If you wish to check out my other stuff, along with photography and just general stuff from my life, check out my Tumblr - http://scoops-stuff.tumblr.com/
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