Do you remember your art teacher in high school?
I had two. One was a really old lady, who we were convinced had an aging disorder. She looked like she was about 120 years old, which is probably more like 62 when you’re only 13. She was quiet, and cranky, and a little bit eccentric {like all the best art teachers are}. I didn’t really enjoy having her as a teacher, because she scared me and I have an aversion to cranky people.
The other teacher though, he was brilliant. Also eccentric, and passionate, he really made an impression on me growing up. I don’t think we realise when it’s happening, but teachers are pretty impressionable, aren’t they? They can shape the way we think, our beliefs, and next to our parents, they’re the biggest adult influence in our lives.
I’m a creative, crazy-thinking person… but even going into art class in high school, it was odd to have less constrictions or rules. At first I think many of us craved boundaries. “But show us what to do!” We were so used to right and wrong, black and white, that it felt weird to have to make something, and it not be right or wrong, it was just art. It was what it was. Simple as that.
Art was a compulsory subject for the first few years, and then the less creative people dropped off and we were left with a small group of eccentric thinkers, when it become elective. The impassioned kids with strong views of the world, and then me and a few others who just wanted to make beautiful things.
Art is confronting. To create and put it out there for it to be judged by others. That’s scary. We’d be given a brief and then sent off to interpret it, however we pleased.
For our final work, we had to make something. Anything. It would be judged. We’d be scored. And, that score would influence the rest of our lives {or part of it}. Heavy.
I did a self-portrait. I should have agonised over it. All that pressure to do well. But art was unlike maths, you can’t get it right or wrong… they either get it or they don’t {the judges}. I think I thought about it a lot, and procrastinated and then pulled it all together in the last few weeks. It was bright, loud, fun, cheeky and very me.
Things didn’t go as planned, but it didn’t worry me. I learned in art that if something screws up, you just change it a little and it all works out. And if it doesn’t, does it really matter? It’s art. Or life. Even an accident can have purpose and direction. I love that lesson. You can be intentionally creating one thing, but it totally changes and ends up as something else. Fluidity. Flexibility.
Deep, man.
That artwork was sent away to Sydney to be judged by real art people. Usually the teacher just marked us, and it was easy over the years to figure out what he liked, and what he didn’t. But we didn’t know these other judges. They were big wigs. Real art people.
Turns out they liked it too. I was picked as one of the top 10% in the State for Art, and my artwork was selected among a small group to be sent to the NSW Art Gallery to be displayed. It was wrapped in bubble wrap and carefully looked after.
A few weeks later, it arrived unexpectedly back at my school. During transit the piece had buckled and it would no longer sit on the wall of the gallery. I was momentarily disappointed, but what a journey it had been on. That artwork took pride of place… in our garage somewhere, wrapped in bubble wrap, packed behind some moving boxes. Eventually we got sick of moving around it so we took it to the tip. I wish I’d kept it.
But this is life. It’s not always how you want it to be. It changes, and turns out to be something else, and I think that’s kinda beautiful, don’t you?
P.S. I wrote this in the middle of the night, no sleep under my belt, jet-lagged to the bejeezus… because I had to get it out. So if it doesn’t make sense, let’s blame it on the jet lag, eh?
Love it!
It is true, sometimes you can think you have life all planned out and it is going how you want and then something throws a spanner in the works and you have to change plans and just go with it. The life lessons from art, imagine that.
I need to get back to being creative and stop talking about it. Being creative makes me happy.
Gosh so you’ve got another hidden talent? So sad it didn’t make the gallery, but sometimes the best things aren’t meant for display. I was CRAP at art, I was too worried about trying to be perfect and get it exactly right. x
Oh seriously! There was so much wrong and so little right in my in class! It wasn’t about art, it was about being able to draw very well. Just in the later years (when I had already dropped it) in became more about creativity. Such a shame!
I’m too OCD control freaky to be creative. The only sticking memory I have of art at high school is painting a green salad pepper (random but true) and taking FOREVER to blend my shades of green and then the teacher came along and slopped bright blue and white and yellow all over it. I can only assume that he was trying to encourage me to be more free and artistic and work with the tones (or something…??) but at the time it just made my stomach knot so tight it hurt and I wanted to cry right there and then. Even now I feel sad about that pepper. I was 15. How funny?!
I remember being nervous in art. I’d picked it as an elective on a whim once. I didn’t last long. I would freak out about having to be so vulnerable – left up to my own devices to create. I just couldn’t do it under pressure with people watching. I wish I’d had more confidence. I did slightly better in primary school though. I had a good teacher (he’s neighbours with my parents and he’d play Nirvana and the Cranberries while we worked haha). I once got an A because i’d accidentally let the paint run on some flowers I drew. He thought I’d done something really clever on purpose…it was a total accident and I’d thought I’d stuffed up!!
I think the story about your self portrait is great. I think as well, as history tells us, a person’s art work might not be how they planned it to be, but it is a record of where a person is at when they create it. It tells a story, even if the artist didn’t realise.
I have believe that I couldn’t paint or draw my way out of a wet paper bag if it had a big hole at either end. When I was at school, Art wasn’t so much a lesson it was more like a chance to not do much for 90 minutes whlst the teacher got on withh a private project. Later in life I found myself in a situation where I was in a Life Drawing class. Still without the requisite skills and faced with a naked woman and no where to run, I started to draw. The tutor of the class, suggested that rather than trying to draw the whole model, select just one part of her body. That worked. I chose her knee down to her foot, and it took about 90 minutes to get right and about 10 sheets of paper, but by the time the class was over, the model was impressed and asked to take the page home. I didn’t need it for my coursework, so I agreed. I was now an artist.
Now I try and use photography and digital manipulation to achieve what I can’t do with paint and pencils, I have finally found something that I feel I can do, and not feel inadiquate at, and feel that I can grow.