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Failed artist seeking audience participation.

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KharBevNor:
Wow, I remember art at high school now.

Your work is technically excellent, but I feel you've become a little mired in a literalist approach to making work that is both conceptually limiting and (if you care about ever making money out of your work) rather behind the times. This is a criticism of the method by which you seem to have been taught more than anything else. I find that the best 'pure' art arises from the analysis of the relationship between the artist and the world. If this is what you want to do (create 'pure' fine art) then it would be best for you to make a serious effort to set your own briefs with a view to breaking that high-school mould. If you are really serious about it you should probably pursue a Foundation diploma (or some other similiar one or two year course based on the Bauhaus teaching model) to deconstruct your previous training, and then some sort of batchelors degree in Fine Art or painting. That's if you want to produce pure art, that is: from what tiny amount I've seen of your work, you should probably consider a career as an illustrator. There's a lot more work in it than you'd think and it requires the rigor of technique and broad visual vocabulary which you seem to possess. Work like that would probably get you on to most Illustration BA's (in the UK at least) without requiring a Foundation, though a lot of places prefer it.

I'm a second year fine art student (having come on from a Foundation diploma) so I have a vague idea what I'm talking about. The sad truth is that the myth of the artist as a lone creative genius is false (as you seem to have discovered through your inability to make work). It actually takes years of training. Though be warned you'll probably end up creating neo-expressionist sculptures made from the bones of birds or something.

Metope:
Thank you, this is probably the best constructive criticism I've ever gotten. I know I'm kind of stuck taking things too literally as you say, and I agree with your thoughts on how the best art is made, I'm just not sure if I'll ever get that far. If I got this right (sorry if I didn't, I've had a long day), you're basically saying that I'm talented, but high school has screwed me up? I've never really looked at it that way, but if that's true it's scary as hell. Breaking habits is extremely hard (this thread is probably a good example). I am serious about making art, but I'm not sure if I will try to make a career out of it, because I know it's extremely difficult and I'm not sure if I'm good enough. This is one of the reasons I'm now in uni studying for a BA in art history, and not in some sort of art school.

You're not the first one to recommend me the illustrator career, and that is the most likely path for me to take if I end up trying to make a living out of art after all. My mother used to be a freelance illustrator, so I know a bit about what it's like. I guess I started this thread so I would slowly get back in the game, but your post made me realize it will probably just end up with me getting nowhere and going in circles. Damn, and here I was thinking I had come up with a great idea. I don't know what I'll be doing in the future other that finishing my art history BA (one and a half year left), so I guess I have a lot of thinking to do...

That said, the thought of neo-expressionist sculptures made of bird bones was kind of depressing, seeing how my mother had made sculptures of flowers and butterflies out of fish bones. Haha, oh well, I still think they are pretty.

KharBevNor:
Everyone learns bad habits vis a vis art in high school. That is just a fact of how art works within a standard high-school education: at high school level you respond to questions set by the exam board/education authority, because everyone has to be marked across the board in a standardised way. It's only when you get to university level when self-direction begins in any serious way, literally just because of the shift in how things are marked and accredited allows for it. Unfortunately, in art, especially fine art, self-direction and self-motivation is literally everything. That's why 95% of people, I would say (in this country anyway, I'm not sure what it's like abroad) need to do a Foundation Diploma before their BA. It's literally an intensive one week course designed to break the mould of high-school art teaching, salvage all the good bits (like your excellence and range of technique) and set you up for the BA.

If there's one thing you should keep on doing, it's making work. Any work. Keep a nice little moleskine sketchbook or something and just draw on the bus or train or whatever, observational or imagined or abstract, it doesn't matter. If you are stuck for more finished work, I recommend losing yourself in exploring the formal properties of materials a an excellent way to generate new ideas. Try new ways of drawing, mark-making and applying paint to paper amd canvas. It doesn't matter what you're doing. The blank canvas is the enemy of the artist. If you're really stuck just throw a pot of ink over it to destroy the blankness and start from there. Once you have filled a few sketchbook and done a few canvases, sit down and analyse what you've done: what images and themes do you keep returning to? Essentially, turn the techniques you use to analyse the work of others inward on your own work. Hopefully you will begin to be able to see how to proceed from there. The only possible way to fail as an artist is not to make work, and even that you can argue against.

Metope:
Looks like I have a lot more work to do than I thought, because I find it hard to motivate myself. And don't even start on the self-direction thing, this is going to take years and years. About the Foundation Diploma, I'm not sure if we have anything similar to in Norway, because I've never heard of anything like it. I know a few people who went to some sort of art course before applying for a bachelor in fine arts, but that's it. The course lasted over a year, and I know it wasn't designed to break bad habits or preparing them for further education, so I guess it's probably as far away from a Foundation Diploma as you can get. Is the Foundation Diploma something they offer at universities, or is it private? And when do you do it; before or after applying for the fine arts BA?

Yeah, I should probably invest in some sketchbooks, pencils, brushes and other stuff (Jeez, I don't even have proper equipment, all I have is a broken calligraphy pen and some old, gooey acrylic paint). I think I need to learn how to empty my head and just paint, draw, doodle, whatever. It will be difficult though, because as my mother says (and you mentioned it too), I have "The fright of the Blank Canvas". I don't know what happened, because I used to draw and doodle mindlessly all over my school notes (Especially math notes. I hated math.) and basically anything you could draw on, but I'm now more determined to get going again than I've been in months, so I know I still have it in me. And yeah, nothing is worse than nothing, I just need to remember that when my first doodles ends up clumsy and awkward.

Aura:
Thanks for this thread.  It's pretty poignant to anyone that lost a lot of their drive for art after high school after getting used to assignments.  I went to a performing arts high school and a lot of us are now suffering from the same kind of artist's block.  It's hard to remember where to start again.

Wanders off to throw some ink at her sketchbook.

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