Blog

I didn’t grow up with art.  No one in my family really knew anything about art.  As a result, I’ve had to learn to navigate through the obstacle course of good and bad advice I’ve received throughout my development.  And the art world is crazy.  Especially for an artist specifically interested in traditional representational art, the information being passed around as gospel is often pretty detrimental to progress.  We get advice about materials, sometimes about subject matter, conceptual elements, business matters or methods of practice that, because we are young and starving to learn, we believe and live by.  But as we mature and grow in knowledge we start to feel like some of those things are wrong, and sometimes it’s difficult to go against the beliefs we’ve held for years as truth.  I was taught a certain way to use color in college that was presented as the way to achieve natural flesh tones.  Not knowing the difference, I developed a sense of color that was garish and gaudy.

It took me years to purge that sense of color from my perception and develop a far more sensitive and accurate perception of color.  I have heard time and time again not to use black in my color palette, and yet masters for centuries have proven that advice wrong. 

So here is the latest advice I’m getting rid of.  Early on in my career I was told by other artists as well as gallery owners that works on paper were a waste of time.  Galleries wouldn’t show them and collectors wouldn’t buy them.  Watercolor was not a viable option to make significant works of art.  Drawings were good for preliminary studies, but had no real value anywhere else.  Printmaking was for hobbyists.  As I write this, it seems insane that I ever would have believed this.  But early on, I just etched it into the rules to follow in order to be a successful artist.  And while I was spending several years navigating the rigors of learning the basics of drawing and painting (especially toiling through the complexities of oil paint) my mind was elsewhere occupied. So this information sat dormant in the background, settling into the foundations of my thinking. But in the years following my studies I have started to understand the potential for creating works of art in different mediums and the beautifully unique qualities specific to each medium.  And I feel like I’m just waking up from the false dreams fed me when I was younger.  There is a great world of potential opening up in my mind as I learn to embrace things I was once taught to shun.  

I can’t say I’m upset with those who gave me bad advice as they were only trying to help.  But the lesson is that knowledge is where we find freedom.  The more we learn, the more mature we are in our knowledge, the more capable we become and the more our creativity can come closer to reaching a greater potential. 

So my advice?  Challenge all advice, learn as much as you can and be wary of anything you hear that you feel may stifle your creativity.