"Am I an Artist?" I can't help but wonder how many nuclear physicists get up
out of bed each morning and ask themselves whether they are nuclear
physicists. Granted, if one is a nuclear physicist, one has concrete
evidence
of the fact--education, background, job title, and hours of working each
day
with whatever it is that nuclear physicists work with--but an artist has
a few
concrete pieces of evidence as well:
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"Am I a fisherman?" You've got a boat, you head out to sea, you
catch fish, and you come home. The question answers itself.
Peruvian Fisherman by Steve Henderson. |
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Paint; canvas; brushes; paper; pencils; clay; some sort of
easel, palette, or workspace--all of which are jumbled together somehow to
create an
oil painting, a drawing, sculpture, piece of jewelry, or some other product that
others look at and call "art."
So it would only make sense to call the person who made it
an "artist." Ah, but nothing in life is simple, and many people--some of
whom are nuclear physicists--work at a day job and do art on the side, in the
evenings, on the weekends, in place of eating lunch--and while what they
produce looks like a painting or a sculpture or a piece of jewelry, they
torture themselves by asking all the time, "Am I an artist? Am I a real
artist?"
Some people ask themselves this so much that they stop
producing whatever artwork they have been producing, until they can get an answer
to the question.
But to some extent, does it really matter? And whose definition of "artist" are you using anyway?
This is what I recommend: go ahead, keep asking yourself the
question if you insist, but don't stop creating whatever it is that you create,
and don't let the question fill your mind and crowd out ideas for your next
piece of work. Your next piece of artwork, that is.
Does this question crowd your mind? Leave a comment and let me know.
--Carolyn