How To KNOW You Are an ARTIST?

What is an Artist?

Art embraces a wide range of the human activities involving creativity and skill. Artworks are intended to explore and express ideas, feelings, and actions that communicate something meaningful, valuable, and sometimes beautiful. Artworks may or may not be useful in the "tool" sense, but they are functional, productive, and essential to humanity. Art engages life. Being an artist is a relevant life task applied to many areas combining skill and aptitude.More specifically now we're applying these to work created as a visual artist.

Who is an Artist?

Artists are any and all people who apply themselves regularly and creatively to making art. If you believe, as I do, that art applies directly to life, then being an artist is a life talent we all need. Art isn't something special; it's essential and relevant across life circumstances. Not all people choose or have opportunities to be visual artists, and fewer make paid careers of it .But all of us need art in our lives to endure and value it, to find and create meaning, imagine alternatives, express and connect with our feelings, ideas, and enrich our lives under changing circumstances. That's a talent, for sure.

Artist as a Career Choice

Being an artist (painter, musician, dancer, etc.) as a career is an occupational decision. Being an artist then becomes a category that defines an important part of your identity. It's what you do for a living and is just as important as being a plumber, firefighter, or scientist.

As a career choice, "artist" is a category that comes with a lot of extra baggage. Self-doubt, envy, and needs for audience recognition, among other things, enter into it. Most artists will tell you that the process of making art is exciting, exploratory, challenging and often joyful; but the need to sell your art can be soul-crushing. Some artists move away from this career choice, feeling like fakes or failures.

vision-board collage by Janet Strayer

Self-doubt

What criteria confirm you are an artist? Are you an artist because you say you are? Because someone else says you are? Do family and friends count or are they discounted because they love you anyway? Are you an artist because you've shown your art publicly? Because someone (other than family or friends) buys it?

This list can go on. What would you add? What do you need to believe in yourself or convince yourself that you are an artist? If ever that was a question for you, I'm interested to learn what convinced you that you are an artist?

Here's my story:

I was not an artist. I hadn't been to art school. I just loved looking at visual art and often needed to make some drawings, paintings, whatever. One day, I drew something I thought was outrageous on a piece of ordinary (non-artistic) yellow office paper using a pen, ink, and that white stuff that covers printer-ink mistakes on white paper. On a whim, and because I also had some sense of humour about myself, I submitted it to an art magazine I'd read to give me glimpsesof what real contemporary artists were doing (The American Artist) . I didn't care at that point: it was a lark, and I let it go at that.

drawing by Janet Strayer

It won first prize in the magazine's "Strokes" drawing contest. Outrageous, right? But it marked a turning point for me. If something so out of bounds and un-pretty, so unplanned and unexpected as this little work could win a prize, maybe I should re-think what this art and artist thing was about.

Frustration and Envy

If you look at a lot of art and are involved in making it yourself, envy of other artists is almost inevitable. Making your own art means you're struggling with unknowns in the process of creating your originals. How else would they be originals? There's bound to be frustration in the process. Fierce self-criticism only adds fuel to frustration and the rebounding envy you have for successful artists (whatever "success" means to you).

The remedy? Go back to work: it's your work you're doing. Frustration tells you when you need to stop and look, look more, break it up, change. Envy, on the other hand is useless and probably based on your magical thinking, anyway. So practice cutting it out.

Rejection

Rejection is an expectable part of the artist-package. If you submit your artwork to juried shows and galleries, so do many other artists. Art is a matter of taste and space. Jurors and critics have their own tastes, and these change. You can look online to see how many now-famous artists had piles of rejection notices before they hit home. Sometimes, rejection can be helpful -- when it some constructive feedback. If not constructive, rejection can still be helpful if you're a stubborn person and feel spurred on to defy it. Even if you're not, remember that we all hate rejection but you cannot let it stop you (see Rejection and the Half-Filled Cup) .

Validation

No external certificate that can validate a person as a bona fide "artist." Doctors, lawyers, professors, and the like, must get certified for their profession. That certification says they have the necessary and sufficient knowledge and skills of their profession. It doesn't say if they are good at it, excel, or just passed by the skin of their teeth.

Once there were craft guilds that certified skills for a given craft. But "artistry" has always included more than artisanship: an elusive quality of perhaps carrying things a bit further than needed to fit the right peg place. Learning craft and skills were surely involved in the historical practice of years of art apprentice training in the shops of established mentor artists.

Now we have art schools. But how many art-school graduates continue to work as artists? Many emerging and even veteran graduates remain unsure whether or not they fit the artist title.

Exposure

All artists, whether or not they've attended art schools, must make it on their own merits as well as navigate the judgments of others. Rejection is hard to take, but not having your artwork seen may be even harder. I wonder how much art that's worth seeing just doesn't get seen?

Work

If you are an artist, you work as an artist. It's a job you show up for, whether you're paid or not. Some artists seem grandiosely self-confident while others suffer from agonizing self-doubt. Most waver midway back and forth between these extremes. But there is one thing we know for sure: To be an artist you must make art! You probably feel that "must" in yourself, regardless of your confidence or doubt.

The bottom line is your work. Do it, maybe tentatively, maybe boldly.' but let it take you where your imagination and creative skills can. Do it without grandiosity. and despite fear. Be as curious and courageous as you are. You create. You make it happen. You are an artist.

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