Art IS My Revolution

I went to an art and design high school, I’ve studied fashion styling, hair styling and makeup artistry. I was born an artist, a creator, and I have been creating art through various mediums my entire life. To me, art equals life. I cannot have one without the other.

Yet with these courses I am taking, I feel like I’m about as knowledgeable as a newborn. I feel like a complete beginner, completely ignorant of the lessons the teacher is about to bestow upon me.

After each class I can feel that I am starting to grasp something though. My art is slowly – very slowly – starting to change. Even if the lessons are teaching me something that is the complete opposite of what I usually create, I am learning something new. And the next time I draw something, the change in my art becomes very noticeable to me.

I am somewhat reminded of the Karate Kid movies. Daniel is given these tasks and he cannot fathom how they will help him learn Karate. And then mr Miyagi shows him what he has learned without realising he was being taught something valuable.

I can relate to that. With many of these classes I’ve thought, “This isn’t relevant for me. This won’t help my art. This is nothing like the art I create.” I have been proven wrong each time. Though the lessons taught me how to draw something dissimilar to what I would normally create, they taught me things that I later realised can be implemented to any artwork and any technique.

Needless to say, I am loving these courses.

It IS frustrating to want to create, need to create, and not yet have the skills to make your vision turn out the way you want it to, but it also keeps me motivated. I have so many ideas, so many images in my head of what I want to create and how I want to create it. And until I do, I won’t be satisfied. So I will take these courses, get my certificates and then I will find more courses to study. I will keep on studying, trying things out and learning by doing. And one day I will be able create something that I feel aligns with my vision. Something that makes me feel as though I had simply pulled the vision from my own mind and pasted it onto the canvas.

I feel a little bit like a child, so eager to grow up. I am more than eager to learn the techniques I need to be able to find and perfect my own art style. I am still finding myself as an artist and I love that journey for myself. As I grow and change as a human being, so will my art. The more I experience, the more I feel, the better my art will become.

Art is not just about drawing a pretty picture. It is about emotions. About making another person feel something that you’ve felt. Community. Sharing a vision. Anyone can learn how to copy a good technique. But I can’t say that the same necessarily applies to being able to create true art.

I think that the ability to continuously create things that makes others feel a certain type of way is a quality that cannot be taught, only improved and intensified. Everyone can learn how to create, but those who are born with an artist’s soul, they create a different kind of art. An art that is even more profound, more intense in the emotions it harbours, and that’s the kind of art that truly saves people. It isn’t about technique or how well you follow the rules. It is about how well you portray the emotions in your heart and how easy it is for others to understand that which you are willing to share with them.

In school, there was always this one student who had excellent technique and it was almost an unwritten rule that they were “the artist” and the rest of the class should find something else they were good at. That they shouldn’t try to outdo that person, because that person was the only artist to be accepted. I am not sure if this is the case in every school or class, but I noticed it often in school. People were labeled as the artist, the musician, the linguist, the class clown etc. And no one really dared to leave those boxes. I still remember the artist in my class. Everyone adored her. The teachers would do her bidding and praise her to no end. She could do nothing and others would still marvel at her. She was the bully that I mention in one of my other posts here on the blog.

To this day, I cannot forget how her art made me feel, simply because it didn’t make me feel anything. Everyone praised her technique and I feared her lack of empathy and emotion. Whenever we create, we leave behind a shard of our soul, an imprint of our emotions. When I looked at her art, I felt as though I was staring into the soul of a narcissistic sociopath. I would be able to feel more from looking at a white sheet of paper, for there I could see and imagine endless possibilities. Her art… it frightened me. It was completely void of any emotion.

I came across her art again as an adult. No one could deny that her technique had improved and it was excellent. But half a lifetime later and her art was somehow still the same.

I know my art is not yet at the level I want it to be. I have a lot to learn and I love exploring my role as an artist. But what I do know is that my art always makes people feel something. It isn’t always something pleasant, but that isn’t what art is there for. Some are saddened by it, some think it looks frightening, others adore it – but it always makes people feel something. So, when I have created something and I feel the usual urge to tear the sheet of paper off the sketchpad and roll it into a ball, I remind myself of that. My art might not yet display the level of skill that I want it to, but it starts conversations and it makes people feel.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Paul Gauguin

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