For a long time I thought that I couldn’t be an artist because I simply wasn’t drawn to rendering some some scene in realistic detail. Silly thought, of course, but one that I think is shared by many.
The kind of art I most enjoy making is both abstract and immediate. That is, I want there to be immediacy to my movements—almost to have my hand move faster than my brain, lest it start judging.
A few weeks back I was listening to the wonderful Kristin Texeira being interviewed. She made an offhand comment that struck me and stuck with me: that art can simply be a physical expression.
I’m sure it’s an opinion shared by many, and I’m sure that I might have suggested as much myself, but sometimes you need to hear something. I needed to hear this something, at that exact time.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every day that I’ve made art since, I’ve felt so much more connected to the work that I’m making, and (suddenly) completely content to think of myself as an artist.
If your work is more than a physical expression, that’s great (obviously), but it truly can be nothing more and still be wonderful work. The movement itself is as much of the art as anything else.
Something similar is true when viewing works of art too, I think. For years (again) I felt sort of embarrassed that I couldn’t articulate why I liked a piece of art or why an art movement resonated with me.
For some reason, it didn’t feel like enough to just enjoy the work. It seemed insufficient to say that I simply liked how it made me feel. That it tickled my brain in a satisfying but totally ineffable way.
Spoiler: it’s totally enough. You have nothing to prove. Like Rick Rubin, you can just “know what you like and what you don’t like, and be decisive about what you like and what you don’t like.”
So whether it’s art that you’re making or works of art that you’re enjoying—and if you have the same reservations I did—I invite you to join me. Our art movement can simply be art; movement.