Happy Birthday Tom. Hope you have a good day!
I have a question for my blog readers. I know that many of you are writers. Do you think of yourself as an artist?
I have painted painting and sold them. I've decorated cakes and sold them. I've written books and sold them. But I have trouble thinking of myself as an artist. How are "Artists"- writers, painters, poets, creatives- any different from me? Well, they are...well...artists. You know...they dress however they want. They are cool and edgy. They hang out with other artists. (Sorry my writer friends I don't think of you as artists either...LOL. You all are regular people like me, moms, dads, coworkers, friends.) Artists go to festivals. They party. They drink and perhaps do drugs. They live in cool places like inner cities (NY, Chicago, Seattle, LA, San Fran, Phoenix.) They talk in artsy ways-arguing literature, music and fine art.
I'm not an artist... I live in the suburbs. I rarely party. You can't tell me from any of the other moms. I don't think anyone would point at me and say-yep. She's an artist. I have never gone on an artist's retreat. I think I would feel out of place in an artist colony.
What makes an artist anyway? I mean, I know plenty of people- ordinary people- who are highly creative-woodworkers, painters, gardeners, knitters, crochets, embroider, music teachers, dance teachers, jewelry makers, cake decorators, interior designers--they live on every block of every town big or small. Yet, I bet if you asked them if they considered themselves artists, they would blush and say no...
What makes an artist anyway? My dictionary says: "artist n. One who creates works of art; especially a painter or sculptor. 2. Any person who performs his work as if it were art."
To my way of thinking that makes us all artists in one way or another. Doesn't it?
Actually, actors are considered artists and many of them don't paint or sculpture.
ReplyDeleteThere are many different breeds of artists, just like there are different breeds of dogs. They all have their own traits and individual tics.
There are many breeds of artists, too. I don't want to seem patronizing, but to say they all colonize and do drugs seems wrong, lol. Painters and sculptors are still painters and scalpers even after the days of drug use and graffiti. So are authors, I know.
Are authors artists? Not in the definition of the word, but certainly we create a world, birth full grown characters, and weave some kind of adventure. We do it with words, artists do it with paint.
From: Jeffrey B. Allen
ReplyDeleteYes Nancy, I consider myself an artist. I sometines dream of myself sitting on the bezel of one of Dali's melting clocks, an artist's brush in one hand and a pen in the other. That is why I am asking, and hoping, that all of my FaceBook friends and fans will support my book, Goneaway Into the Land on the Harper Collins website, Authonomy.com.
Catapult the novel and see what it can do. It has already touched hundreds... but it needs a push. Will you help?
Hmmm. Interesting question. The bohemian image of An Artist is an enduring one, and many writers have fitted into those parameters (think of Wolfe and her Bloomsbury Circle; or Ernst Hemingway with his swashbuckling persona.)
ReplyDeleteBut it's just an image that has been endorsed by a few larger-than-life characters who tapped into the public's image of An Artist.
My view is that artists, and writers in particular, are merely people who have the ability to tap into the unconscious, both the collective and personal unconscious, and that gift does not preclude them from being moms and pops or teachers and gardeners.
LOL! You haven't met my husband, the computer graphic artist - totally domesticated, totally responsible, and about as normal as they come.
ReplyDeleteI am a professional photographer as well as author, so I've always considered myself an artist.
And I don't know about you, but I think writers and authors can be just as odd!
L. Diane Wolfe
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