What makes an Artist? It Is Not the Beret. Here's something that confuses people more than it should: nobody gives you a badge. I looked. There's no exam, no licence office with bad carpet and a ticket machine, and the word "artist" isn't protected by law the way "architect" is. Anyone can use it. Hardly anyone does, at least not out loud, which is odd when you think about it, because the same people will say "I'm a plumber" without a flicker of doubt. So what makes an artist, if it isn't paperwork? I've got some thoughts, and a pigeon.
What is an visual Artist?
In a dictionary and you'll be told an artist is a person who makes art. That's a bit like defining soup as a thing. My own working definition is scruffier. An artist is somebody who makes things because an idea keeps nagging until it gets a form and the body can be paint, clay, a song, a wall, or a sandwich built with unreasonable seriousness. The material is nearly irrelevant. What counts is that somebody decided something, did it, looked at the result and then decided the next thing. A paint by numbers kit gives you a pretty picture, but the kit made all the decisions. Artists make their own, even the silly ones and the dumb ones are often where it gets interesting.
Do you need to have talent to be an Artist?
Talent is the reasoning everybody gos for for first. "I can't draw" has quietly ended more creative lives than any gallery rejection, usually around lunchtime on a Wednesday. But drawing is mostly a skill, and skills get built. Draw a horse four hundred times (the first thirty will be dreadful, that's allowed) and horse number four hundred and one will look like a horse. Some people do start a few metre's ahead. Fine. It's a very long race and most of it consists of turning up on days when nothing works and even if the dog has been sick on the carpet! Stubbornness beats a gift that stays in a drawer.
Do you need an art degree or go to an art school to be an artist?
Short version: no. You don't need a degree or art school to be an artist, and nobody will ask to see one. There is no license and the law has nothing to say about who gets to hang a picture on a wall.
Art school does hand you some very useful things. Teachers who aren't your mum, proper critique, a studio with decent light and a crowd of people who'll argue until midnight about whether a particular green is a lie. Those perks are real and I'd never talk anybody out of them. They can be found elsewhere too, in evening classes, online courses, a mentor, or a friend honest enough to tell you the sky in your painting looks like gravy. Henri Rousseau worked as a toll collector and taught himself to paint, and he ended up in museums. Meanwhile somebody with a master's degree is, right now, painting a pigeon with seven legs. Qualifications and legs are barely related.
What qualities do artists have?
People disagree about the qualities of an artist, but a few keep turning up whoever you ask. Curiosity is the big one. Artists stare at a wet pavement for an alarming length of time, then announce it looked like a sad Belgian. Then you need a bit of nerve, because there's a special kind of fear in showing someone a thing you made, particularly when it's half-finished and the left ear is missing. Discipline gets less attention than it deserves, since canvases don't fill themselves up, however nicely you ask. And last, a thick skin with something soft inside, a combination that's hard to manage and that I've never met anyone to have fully sorted.
Humor helps. Art that takes itself far too seriously tends to fall over, like a man in a very tall hat.
Can anyone be an Artist?
Yes, with one catch: you have to make something. Wanting to be an artist and being one are separated by a large pile of unfinished sketchbooks and everybody has that pile. Age doesn't count. Grandma Moses only took up painting seriously in her late seventies, and she did all right. Neither does that crushing school art lesson where a teacher told you trees aren't purple (they can be, it's your tree). Every expert began by making bad work and has since developed amnesia about it. A pencil and an hour is the whole entry requirement.
How do you find your own art style?
Art Styles aren't picked off a menu. They creep up on you. You make a lot of stuff, you copy the people you love because that's how everybody learns, and eventually you notice your copies keep going wrong in the same odd way every time. That odd way is you. Your style is basically your mistakes, repeated with human confidence and one day a stranger will describe them as "distinctive".
This is why a body of work matters so much. Finished pieces beat good intentions. An art portfolio doesn't need to be super impressive, only honest and a decent pile of it lets other people spot your unique voice before you've noticed it yourself. For most people that happens somewhere around the fortieth drawing, not the first.
When can you call yourself an artist?
Now, more or less! If you make art everyday, you keep learning and the whole business matters to you, that's the qualification. You don't have to wait for a sale or for a gallery to say yes and money makes a rubbish is a referee anyway. Van Gogh sold nearly nothing while he was alive and you'll struggle to find anyone who argues that he wasn't an artist.
Being a professional artist is another question entirely. That involves invoices, deadlines and explaining to a cousin at a wedding what you actually do all day. You can be a full-time artist on a part-time income, and plenty are.
The difficulty around saying it out loud is mostly social. It feels like walking into a party in a cape. Try it on the dog first. The dog won't care, which makes it perfect.
So what makes an artist?
To condense it, an artist is someone who makes things on purpose, keeps going when it gets irritating and leaves a bit of themselves part of the result. I can't find anything else in the job description apart from the beret, and that's optional.
Go and make something. That wonky mug on your shelf has been waiting years to become a sculpture.
To find out about my new artwork please join my mailing list.