Ask, And You Shall Receive...An Answer!

It's funny how life happens... 

In my last post, I speculated about art, uniques styles, primitive art and asked myself whether all the years I invested in art training behind the scenes was a waste of time...

Yesterday, I went out for the day with my writer friend, Nina and my sister to tour around and take a look at the scenery of Nova Scotia.  It was a lot of fun, and quite visually beautiful!  Since it is spring out here, the rivers are mostly open and quite high, so we saw a lot of drowned trees and river rapids on our drive.  There is a feeling of excitement and rebirth to spring that is unique to this season and very distinct in different places.  In the Maritimes, it is all about melting and things getting going again... Rebirth;-)

That was wonderful, and of course, we got lost because we set out to do so.  And I was driving, so that virtually guaranteed it!  When we ended up on secondary road going along a river we stopped and asked this sweet older lady for directions.  Just to get our bearings so we didn't end up in Yarmouth by mistake.

She got to talking with us and invited us to stop by her house for tea after we finished our photo session.  We decided to take her up on it and after we got there, Marion and Sonny (the lady and her husband) treated us to an impromptu lesson on the history of that particular area of Nova Scotia.  It was very fascinating and entertaining as they both had a great sense of humour and loved their home and province with a passion;-)

As we had tea, we found out that Marion had taken some art lessons and was interested in painting as a hobby.  An interest in art was pretty obvious as she had a few nice paintings on her walls that she had done in her classes.

So we started talking about art and painting and I had my earlier blogpost question answered, even though I wasn't really consciously seeking the answer!

Because Marion was literally 'taught' to paint with what I thought was a very strange process...  Her instructor premixed her paints for her and then had her follow along on her paintings basically by watching him paint and try to ape his movements on her canvas.

With this method of 'teaching', she ended up with paintings to put on her walls, but no personal skills to create more.  Wow.  I was horrified...

  No grasp on colour theory, no grasp on composition, no practice in drawing or the creation of forms to simulate the appearance of three dimensions using light and shadows, and no way to move forward to paint for her own enjoyment! 

So she has paintings on her walls she can look at, to say to her friends and family, 'I can paint.'...  But when she tried to paint for herself, she was frustrated to no end. 

It really took the enjoyment out of it, I could see that.  So here we have a woman that would love to paint, but can't as she found herself frustrated and unable to because of the way she was 'taught'.


New Brunswick Farm
by Teresa Young

What is teaching?  To me, it's about seeing what your student(s) want, where they are at and where they want to go... The focus for me is on them, not on me. 

I already know how to paint, I don't have anything to prove.  So if I'm teaching, I would like to pass on the craft and skills so that person can go away and stand on their own...  What I would really like to pass on is a love of art for it's own sake, allowing that person to reach for their own unique form of expression, enriching the art world for all of us, eventually...

Cat's Emotions
by Teresa Young

I must admit that over the years, I've taught a few people to sketch, and a few people to paint, but nothing really major as I've focused a lot of my time on survival and working in IT.  --> But in IT, I spent a lot of time teaching many different people how to do things, passing on knowledge to strengthen my teammates and allow them to reach their own potentials...  I'm a good teacher, so maybe my training in art can allow me to teach what I know as a painter in a useful and clear manner.

I'm thinking now that what I was speculating about in my last post was more to do with how things are taught, not whether the information itself was a waste...

I think teaching anything should include a shift of focus to the student, rather than concentration on the teacher.  Or else it won't work, as I so eloquently saw with poor Marion yesterday...  The end result is that you could literally turn someone off art, without really meaning to.

Getting back to artistic training and how it relates to my unique style, what I think now is that without training in composition, my art wouldn't work as it does.  And without colour theory, it wouldn't be beautiful and resonate as a major art form...

So in the final analysis, I believe my art training was not wasted.  And that makes me really happy!

Photos and art images by Teresa Young:

1. & 2. River near LaHave - March 2010,  3. Stained glass window in LaHave Bakery - March ,  4. & 5.  An artists tools - March 2010,  6. New Brunswick Farm - August 1985,  7. Cat Dreams - January 2000.

Can Too Much Information Prevent Unique Individual Expression?

 

I went through a somewhat traditional gamit when I was learning to express myself as an artist, I started drawing at a young age, found I had a talent for realism and portraiture, and then focused myself on learning how to draw from life...  I went out and took lessons, looked into reference materials on how to do different things and learned the proper ways to execute a portrait, draw a still life, paint a landscape, use of different media for art...  In other words, I relied heavily on input from authority figures on my subject of interest, art, and pretty well took it as gospel.

When we look through art history at people that never followed any type of traditionalized art training they are often called 'primitive' artists.  What this means is that they weren't influenced by any one art school or artist in particular and their personal style evolved in isolation.  There are many pros and cons to this approach, one of the pros being the art is new and distinct unto itself.  One of the downsides is that often the composition of their pieces are off kilter in some subtle or even a major way, and it can be uncomfortable for the viewer.  But in a way, that's pretty cool as well, because if it disturbs you, it can reach you as nothing else can!

All of this verbal meandering has a point to it, as I'm edging towards a personal philosophy about artistic expression that I've been forming for myself over the last couple of decades...

When I was fourteen years old, I changed the style of my paper works by trying something new.  Basically, I left my own comfort zone and reached for a different style of self expression.  I must admit I was probably influenced by Dali and Gervasio Gallardo, but I was trying to develop something more personalized in the process. In light of my favourite artists, and for the lack of better categorization, I called my new stuff surreals...

I tried to chuck everything I thought I knew about art and rules of engagement and cleared my mind and went for it! Probably, after years of rigidity to get things just so, I wasn't truly able to do that, and the final result was a mishmash of everything under the surface of my consciousness. While I was only partially successful in what I set out to accomplish, it was a start into an evolution, and over the course of many decades, I did develop my own distinct style!

It's my belief that if you don't leave your comfort zone and push the envelope, art can become a chore and no longer have the life and passion we need to nuture ourselves as artists...  Not to mention that it can really contribute to some interesting new developments in art if enough of us do this.

Over time, I've revisited this idea over and over, and it's taken a bit of a different turn for me.  If I needed to shuck what I knew in order to develop a different style of self expression, did I really need all that training in the first place? 

Which brings me back to the primitive style of artist... Perhaps in many cases we are interfering with something unique and valuable on it's own when we introduce a training path for artistic expression.  Couldn't we be delaying or preventing the invention of some of our own more unique styles and genres by directing them into a path where teachers tell them how things work?  A lot of abstract styles are about pushing the boundries and crossing borders. If the artist isn't aware of the borders and boundries, he/she might never even visit that territory!  They might develop something unique on their own that is highly personal and distinct within itself.  If you look back at history a bit,  it seems to me that unique genres used to pop up much more regularly.  The communication network around the world was a lot less efficient and more people were discovering their artistic expression in isolation from their peers.

Thinking that over, I think that we might be exacerbating this process by the introduction of so many sources of input, IE: television, computers, the internet... 

On the other hand, maybe not.  It might just create new art forms as an end result, as there is so much information out there the confusion tends to drown out the component messages.  It's hard to treat what's on your screen at any particular moment as the last word on how you can approach doing something when there are literally dozens and dozens of dissenting opinions on it. 

This can apply to just about everything, actually!  Say you do a search on something you want to do using Google...  The search results will rank the data returned for you (thanks Google!) but it's using numbers, not any specific criteria of qualification.  So if you pore through those results, you'll be looking at a gamut of answers.  I sometimes find that figuring things out for myself ends up being less of a headache and I go that route!

My writer friend and I have many discussions on art, it's a somewhat hot topic for us and the ideas we end up bandying about can be way out there.  I'm leaning towards the idea that most of us crave artistic expression and the introduction of rules and criteria can interfere with personal artistic expression for the everyday soul...  Maybe if you don't have to make what you draw/paint look like something, you'll enjoy it more and continue doing it when you're an adult.  Why does art have to be an achievement instead of a passion? 

Personally, when I tried going my own way with art, I found that I did it more often. I had been subject to painter's block sporadically for years and found that pursuing a new direction definitely alleviated that problem.  On top of that, it was very freeing to finally be at the helm of my own personal expression journey, and it created many new ideas of where I wanted to go with it. 

Images by Teresa Young:

1. Still Life Sketch - 1980,  2. Portrait of a Boy -  November 1997,  3. Cats Emotions - August 1998,  4. Rebecca's Gaze - February 2004,  5. Closeup - Fields Of Flurry - January 2010,  6. Emergence - September 1998.

How Do Our Experiences Shape Our World View?

 

I've often wondered about that old saw about 'seeing the world through the eyes of an artist'.

Over the years, I've heard many variations on that particular theme in popular culture:

- Life through the eyes of a child.

- Approaching life with the 'engineering mindset'.

- A writer's take on the world.

- A mother's viewpoint...

And so on... Which leads me to wonder, how much do our experiences really shape our world view?

I have a fleeting image of individuals who change hats to change their viewpoint... IE: I'm looking at this as techie or now I'll check it out as a mother!

How many times does that average person change their hat in the course of a day? It would certainly be challenging to quantify. And your control group would have to be very perceptive and honest in order to make the study relevent. If it could even be done...

Coming back to the artist, how does that artist express/communicate his vision of the world in his work if he also has many other 'personas' or worldviews? Could be an interesting direction to pursue if you had a sense of humour I would think...

I have a writer friend who is fascinated with personal expression and how the artist can speak for their generation on some level. There's been a lot of debate on the artists role in society and their voice in a culture. She even postulates that it is the artists responsibility to publish their views in order to express that 'piece of our culture'.

I don't know about that, but I'm a firm believer in variations in order to create a broader, more balanced view of things. 

Maybe our own hat changing trick is designed to do just that, balance us out so that we don't stagnate or go crazy!

With that in mind, I'm going to go change hats and take a look around...

Images by Teresa Young:

1. The Fungus - August 2001,  2. Urgency - June 2007, 3. Currents Musings  June 2009, 4. Closeup of Veil of Tears -  March 2010.