Artist at last!
My Artistic Journey, or how I finally became an artist in my forties
I was 47 before I dared calling myself an artist. Before, I had a hobby. A hobby is a big blanket you can hide your fears and insecurities under. It helps you hide how much this thing you do any chance you get at the weekend and in the evening means to you. It hides the fact that this is the only thing in your life that keeps you going and sane. It feeds your soul. It’s the little square of blue sky in the prison cell. Well-meaning people (and my family) might be offended to learn that I compare my perfectly nice life to a prison cell. These people are not artists. I have felt like a prisoner, because I didn’t have enough free time to do what I wanted to do, my freedom was taken away from me while I was walking free, and the worst is that I agreed to this. I know that most people feel this way, they’d rather do something else than what they’re actually doing. It’s really sad if you think about it. I was desperately looking at this piece of blue sky because this was the only thing that allowed me to breathe, but never enough, never a full breath, always a reasonable amount. Being out in the open, able to breathe as deeply as I wanted, to feel the sky taking all the space around me, being free to create until I had exhausted all the ideas that were in my head, it seemed like a futile idea. Until I decided to dare create and to hell with the rest. “Become” an artist not just in deed but in words.
Art has always been important to me but where I come from, in my family and my milieu in general, art was something you consumed. A product. Instead of getting it in a supermarket, you found it in museums, libraries, theaters or concert halls. Other people created it for your enjoyment. I find that extremely hypocritical now, this colonialist ideal of exploiting other people’s artistic talents for your own enjoyment. Usually, dead people. Living artists are too unpredictable and might turn out not to be “real” artists. On the other hand, dead painters or writers are a sure bet, and scandalous behaviors are actually a plus once they’re dead.
When you’re an art consumer, you can have your (artsy) cake and eat it too. You feel artistically enlightened without going through the strenuous work of becoming a decent artist. But that is just the wrong way to enjoy art. The right way is to create. You might be a good artist or a bad artist, it’s irrelevant and a matter of opinion anyway, but the important thing is to create because that is what feeds your soul. Art consumers are like the vampires of the art world, they suck the blood out of artist’s creations to feed themselves. Artists let them because in exchange, they receive money. I kind of dream of a world where artists (and non-artists too, actually) would get a monthly stipend to create and share their art for free. Remove money out of the equation. Reward artists for creating and making our society more livable. Just a dream obviously.
Wannabe artists do not get a lot of encouragement because creating art the way it should be done gets in the way of everything else. It becomes an obsession, and suddenly careers, money, families become secondary, which is why people in my family and around me didn’t think becoming an artist was a legitimate endeavor. To them careers, family and money are more important than art. Kids in my family are pushed to become doctors, teachers, engineers, even lawyers, why not, but never artists. If art means so much to them, they can spend all their weekends visiting museum exhibitions once they land a decent job.
The hypocrisy of teaching your kids how to pronounce “Van Gogh” properly, giving them the complete works of Marcel Proust for their 15th birthday , dragging them through various museums to teach them about art, signing them up for music lessons, drawing lessons, ballet lessons, acting camps to develop their artistic talent, encouraging them to perform in front of the extended family when there is a reunion while getting ready at any point to pull the rug from under them if they actually express the wish to take this artistic thing further! It seems completely schizophrenic to me, and I am still mad at myself for buying this.
For the longest time, I believed without question that Art was not a serious endeavor, so I concentrated on other things. I had wanted to be a writer since before my 10th birthday, but I was planning to become a journalist, or a teacher first, to have a “real job”, and then, maybe, if I had time, I would try to be a writer. I was also interested in ceramics, but I believed my little clay figurines were not worth much and there was no point pursuing it. My uncle had said that I should take classes, but I was just as arrogant as my milieu and basically believed it would be a waste of time, since art was not where real life happened. So many years lost doing other things than what I really wanted to do, being afraid of claiming what I was and being proud of it. Growing up in France didn’t help. Claiming to be a writer in France means you think you are the equivalent of Victor Hugo, Balzac, Proust, Sartre, Camus and quite a few others. In the United States, I have met several 20 years old over the years who wanted to be writers and announced it without any qualms or anxiety or false modesty. I envy them. When I was their age, I was nursing my wish to be a writer like a dirty secret. In the US, kids have heard so much “you can be anything that you want to be” that they actually believe it. They’re allowed to dream about being artists, even making money from it. The American Dream, baby!
If you deter kids from becoming artists, not only are you hurting them -art is good for your health- but you’re also hurting your society. No artist = no art. Who wants to live in a society without art? Really devoid of any sort of art? Imagine if all your plates were white, all your walls white, all your clothes one color and one shape, all your stuff practical with no ornamentation whatsoever, no movies, no series, only game shows (in Jeopardy, all the questions would be about sports and politics) and sport programs on TV, no music, no photos, no dancing, no book. How can you pride yourself on being interested in art and at the same time undermine future artists? What would happen if there wasn’t, every day, people young and old that will keep creating no matter what they heard growing up? The truth is that art is so ingrained in our well-being that people will keep creating, no matter if they do it for free, no matter what they were told and our society has come to rely on this. That’s why art is always so badly funded compared to the military and gets cut out of the school budget before Mathematics. Most people will not join the army for free, or do math problems for fun, but they will sing, dance and paint for free. Because art makes you happy.
I was lucky in a way, because even though my parents and my family did not want me or any other of “their” kids to become an artist, they taught me to value art. They gave me the keys to appreciate art and know it was there and it still took me decades to claim art as my thing. Some kids don’t have that chance. However I am hopeful they will stumble against art one way or another. It is actually difficult to avoid. Video games, music videos, photos in the media, street art, under a million shapes and forms, art can be found anywhere and in everything. So I hope the kids will find art and art will find the kids no matter where they come from. Late bloomers are fine too, you could be 8, 24, 50 or 71, there is no age limit. That’s another thing that bothers me, this idea that kids should draw and take dance lessons, but once you turn 18, you have much more important things to do. What could be more important?
I want to fight with all my heART against the idea that art is superfluous. I feel about art like I feel about democracy: it’s hard work to keep it going, but at the same time, there is no other way, we all need it. It’s time consuming and not always perfect, but it has to be there.
Creating some art!
Art is one of the only things that makes humanity worth saving. On the other side of the balance sheet is war, abuse, religious extremism (although religion provided amazing art, not everything is black and white), racism, slavery, terrorism, pollution, climate change, genocide, torture and I probably forget quite a few. Our only claim to positive fame is art and random kindness.
Don’t waste any time. Finish reading this and go create something, anything. It doesn’t have to be good. Start with something you’re interested in, or just take a class that is being offered in your community and see where it will take you. You need it. Society needs it.