I figure art is a 'practice makes perfect' type of thing - past lives. I naturally express myself through drawing, painting, free-form ceramics, wood carving, photography, video, etc. Seems to take a highly developed sense of eye-hand coordination, so that what the eye sees, the hands can duplicate, with tools. It was something I was born with, and have always treated it pretty casually, since it is so accessible. I also made the decision in high school not to follow it as a career, because my best chances for success, and a steady paycheck, would have been in commercial art, and in my youthful idealism, I considered that a form of prostitution. So it has always accompanied me, with my interest growing or waning over the years. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :
My best friend in high school was a gifted artist, and the best ceramicist in the school. He could center the clay immediately, make thin walls, lips, lids with ease, while I would struggle with each of those things. I am still in awe of artists who are able to draw or create art with ease. I may have told this story before. In the fifth grade, there was a kid, Chris Hagelin, who even at that age was a gifted artist. He died of a brain hemorrhage that summer. I remember a picture of the headless horseman he made. At the St. Louis Zoo, there is a fountain made of animal figures our sixth grade class in remembrance of him. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : When I was trying to make a living doing "art," I met "real artists" who were so artistically superior that I was ashamed to present my stuff -- and yet most could not make a living selling their art. At one time I was in three galleries and never came close to selling enough to "cut it." I met one guy who had major works in many museums and still couldn't sell enough to quit his day job. And the gallery owners are all about the money. I had one tell me, as he looked at one of my canvases, "Oh, I couldn't sell this. Purple never sells." See? Try to use purple after that. The true artist is up against such a wall of ignorance. Each one is like a preacher on a stump in the public square -- speaking an unknown dialect.
