Are Any of Us Qualified?

I’ve spent many hours writing about art, even though I don’t feel especially qualified for the job. Come to think of it, I don’t feel especially qualified to make art, either. No matter. Do what you love, and you’ll love what you do.

Today, I am turning my attention to the stack of art journals on my counter. I open one, find a couple of pages that I once thought were finished but never really liked, and start covering up the old stuff. The problem is that I do not know what I’m doing. I have no plan. I just paste and paint and spray and shake my head a lot. Sometimes I think I should stop it with all the unplanned, grab-something-and-go-to-town-with-it stuff. My shelves are brimming with art books: some that show me what the masters created and others that tell me how to create what most people consider art, be it with a camera, a pen, or a brush.

Oh, then there are all the books on the psychological side of creating art and the ones written by critics or purists who think that all art should _____________ or that anything that ____________ has no right to be called art. How did I even get started down this path? Why do I continue on it?

Curiosity. I think I need to chalk it up to curiosity. I read books to learn things; I play at making art to see if I can pull off another coup: Hey, I’ve done this before. Some people have said they like some of it (and many of them are strangers!). Let’s see if I can pull the wool over their it off again.

I do enjoy spending my time this way. There’s that.

Besides, the world needs art, especially here and now, when the bad guys order their minions to act like the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century or the Soviet tyrants of the twentieth. Maybe I resist certain restraints on my art because the practice of creating art is inextricably tied up with liberty. Sure, there has been plenty of propaganda created by the edicts of this leader or that, but unless artists were given a template to trace or step-by-step instructions to follow, their freedom to choose this model, these tones, or those materials show up in the finished product, and that means that there might be at least a smidge of truth, goodness, and beauty therein.

Maybe that faith in the creative process is what makes me bristle when I encounter unequivocal decrees about certain works or particular artists by those who think they know. No, thank you. I prefer nuance and the freedom to draw my own conclusions.