17 posts tagged “art”

Nancy bought me a Moleskine to get my creative juices going... I am in an absolute creative rut unfortunately so I want to use it just to open up and explore different styles, subjects, ideas and stuff.

An old friend of mine is having her first solo exhibition in Johannesburg, which she invited me to come see. Nancy asked if it would make me sad if I went. What she meant was if it would make me feel bad for not becoming an artist myself. It probably will. I always get this ache in my heart when I go to gallery or an art museum. But nothing effects me quite as much as a practicing artist, especially a successful one and doubly especially one who I think is not that talented anyway. It makes me feel as if I have neglected my greatest ability and stupidly deprived myself of an equally fulfilling and productive life.

Recently I bumped into a lady who showed me some houses in Grahamstown a few months ago. She told me that she has since quit her job as an estate agent to become a full time artist. I was surprised to hear that because she was doing quite well for herself as an agent and I had no idea she was an artist. It made me remember one of the houses she showed Nancy and I. The owner was an artist himself who used a small damp cellar as a studio and wanted to move to a bigger house. As I was looking around the place I had a good look at his paintings too and we got talking about them for a bit. Of course he had no idea how much I yearned to lead his life. Just I had no idea how much the estate agent was also yearning to lead his life. To her I was just a schoolteacher. To me she was just an estate agent. To the guy selling the house we were both not-artists. She had a good laugh when she realised that I teach Art and that I understood exactly how she could have left a reasonably well-paid job to pick up her paintbrushes again.

People often think of artists as tragic figures who struggle to keep body and soul together, but the artists I know are nothing like that. They all make a fair amount of money, which they invest in things like property and lead perfectly comfortable lives. I believe if an artist is talented, works hard, has an audience and a little bit of business acumen, they will probably do fine financially. The stereotypical starving artist is the exception. Either the artist lacks talent in which case they don’t count, or they are so unique and ahead of their time that their work goes unappreciated, which is quite rare when you come to think of it. The artists I know are certainly talented and their talent is easily recognisable to others. So they sell their work. And make money. Just like my old friend in Johannesburg.

When I was a kid I met man from Germany. His mother and my aunt were penpals for many years and they would visit one another once a year or so. When she came to South Africa, her son came too. He always brought his sketchbook and paints and would busy himself doing art while the two ladies caught up. He was hobbyist painter at the time. He experimented in different media and taught himself different techniques and I didn’t think much of his work. It wasn’t that much different to what I used to do for school. I recall showing him my pictures and we would talk about them. He said I was really talented. Many years later he too quit his job as an estate agent to become a full-time artist. Now has a humungous studio overlooking a forest in Germany where he produces colourful abstract paintings that have brought him a degree of fame. I still don’t think he is particularly talented, but he has honed his style to such a degree that he can bring out the most that he can in his art.

I guess the moral to be had is that to be successful as an artist requires the same skill, work ethic and self-determination that it takes to be successful in any career. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but I am sure I’ll also end up as a full-time artist down the line. Until then teaching art well is a satisfactory career too.
 

This is the last vase I did for my Ceramics course, which brings my Art practical method to a close as well.

From now on it is all teaching with very little doing on my part. 

Over the weekend I did a series of drawings and paintings using alternative materials. It is a project that Art and Design teachers recommend as an opening to the course to get their students to loosen up and be creative. At first I was quite reluctant to use strange, messy and sticky things but afterwards I quite enjoyed seeing the results.

I also earned my first bit of money this year doing a line illustration for a book cover.
 

Today I went to my last class on teaching Design. As from next month I’ll be teaching the subject myself and be graded almost entirely on that. All the projects and assignments I have done so far hardly count towards my teaching certificate. I find that quite disappointing really because I have put so much time and effort into each of them. Then again, I did them because I wanted to not because I had to. After working for so many years with barely enough time in the day to make a sandwich, being able to do art everyday has been very rehabilitating. Now I feel like me again.

For the past 2 weeks in our Art method course we have been learning how to go about teaching ceramics to school kids. As usual we need to do some of the projects ourselves just to go over the techniques again and get a feel for the medium. The lecturers don’t really care about the artistic merit of what we do, as long as we have gone through the ‘making’ process. Nonetheless I always grab the opportunity to do something creative and try to produce a self-standing artwork. Often the lecturers think I am going overboard with the projects. One even asked me why it is that I want to be a teacher and not an artist. That gave me something to think about afterwards…

I always thought that art teachers had the ability to be artists in their own right, but chose to teach so that they could share their passion with others and generate a stable income as the case may be. The truth of the matter is that “those who can do and those who can’t teach”… I used to hate that stupid maxim until I started training to be a teacher. Now I can easily see the truth behind it… The vast majority of people training to be teachers with me know only the very basics of their specialist areas and surprisingly this does not hamper their ability to teach. Good teachers are basically distinguished by their ability to control a class and get information across in a positive manner. Those are the skills that are actually required to be a teacher. Still, I think that having a genuine interest in your subject area makes it easier to be inspiring when you teach, and having ability in that subject area makes it easier to give sound advice. It must be a nightmare to teach art for example when you can’t draw your ass from your elbow.
 

This morning I took in the first vase of a series to demonstrate various pottery techniques. The teacher took a quick glance at it and asked me rather caustically if I like flowers. I said I did. I meant to ask her if she knew of anyone who did not like flowers but held my tongue in case I had misheard the tone of her voice. I don’t think I did because she then asked if the thing was finished, implying, as art teachers do, that it was unsuccessful as it was. Needless to say I was thoroughly miffed. Granted the vase is hardly a work of art, but as a simple demonstration of the ‘pinch pot’ technique (which quite honestly a 3 year old could do) it was more than adequate.

It is strange how much we rely on compliments. They are half the reason we do anything. As a grown-ass man I thought I had become immune to criticism I don’t agree with, but that is obviously not the case. I guess if it was I would be a really hard person to get along with and a pretty harsh teacher too.