The Artists Journey

“The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he must make others see.”  Edgar Degas

I want to start by saying no good artist ever stops being a student on some level. However, there does come a time when the “art student” should move from the process of learning and practicing techniques to being an “artist”.

In my “Principles of Design” class two weeks ago, we were discussing being passionate about what we paint. When we start out, we learn about the medium we want to use, and all the ways we can use it. We experiment with it to see what it can do, learn techniques we can do with it, and learn to render what we see into a strong composition. We learn color theory, Elements of Design, Principles of Design, and we do exercises to master these things. Then, we challenge ourselves to do things that are more difficult to expand those skills. If we work abstractly we learn about formatting.

At some point however, “the student”, needs to write that artist statement we talked about in Blog 5, and determine what motivates them to continue painting, and why they choose to paint or create what they do. It’s at that point of understanding the “why”, that passion takes over the work. It starts to exude that special something that touches the viewer, enabling the viewer to connect with it beyond, that looks exactly like…

It captures the awe in the subject rather than being an excellent rendering of the subject.

“Fine  Art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together”  John Ruskin