Artists Are "Different"?

[Michele Rushworth]

Linda, I loved your Standardized Achievement Test! I particularly liked one of the answers for question 1:

What are all these dots? Is this, like, math?

When something looks suspiciously like math, my brain shuts down. Does that mean I am really an artist?

[Catherine Muhly]

This is a timely string. Today at the social hour after church, a couple of parishioners were being embarrassingly-to-me impressed by my being an "artist." They attributed special gifts, insights, vision that they denied possessing, themselves.

To me, "artist" covers a broad group of occupations. I am trained in the craft of picture-making, specializing in doing people. The artistry of my occupation is in trying to do a good job, to make good portraits. My innovation or insight consists in handling the tools of my craft - line, value, hue, chroma - to enhance or dramatize what I find interesting about the sitter.

My sensitivity derives from spending a great deal of time observing heads, expressions, features, settings. All these things have been what has interested me since as early as I can remember. I've been a people watcher all my life.

But I won't stand on any pedestal. I'm impressed by physicists, statisticians, dentists, auto mechanics, CPA's, attorneys, carpenters and more, who, like me, have focused a great deal of attention, observation, speculation, love and interest on the specifics of their respective crafts and vocations. Nobody has attributed to them a preternatural gift or sensitivity. Yet the good ones do a great job, are greatly absorbed by their work.

Maybe it's because pictures can be appreciated by nearly everybody that artists are considered special. But I consider anyone who loves what s/he does, who tries to do an excellent job, to top what s/he's done before to be special, and they ought to take their bow, too.

[Mike McCarty]

A. I feel a buzzing in my ear!

2. I feel a buzzing in my ear!

c. Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way to walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side should rubies find: I by the tide of Humber would complain. My love should grow vaster than empires, and more slow; an hundred years should go to praise thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;

IV. Two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest; an age at least to every part, and the last age to show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, nor would I love at lower rate.

cinco. Now therefore, while the youthful hue sits on thy skin like morning dew, and while thy willing soul transpires at every pore with instant fires, now let us sport us while we may, and now, like amorous birds of prey, rather at once our time devour, than languish in this slow-chapt power. Thus, though we cannot make our sun stand still, yet we will make him run.

((4 + 3)-1) I still feel a ... no, I think it's gone now. I'm just no good on testing day.

[Marvin Mattelson]

IMO artists are different. We have an inherent appreciation for beauty and a rabid desire to share our vision with others. I hold artists to a much higher standard than I do those who are non-artists.

For example, rudeness and the unwillingness to forgive are things that I can barely bring myself to tolerate in non-artists. However, this type of behavior on the part of an artist would lead me to doubt the integrity and validity of their work.

[Linda Brandon]

Now that you mention it, Mike, my vegetable love should grow faster than empires, and more slow.

[Jim Riley]

It seems that the question "Are Artists Different?" is two part. In one case we do something different than other professions which require different skills. You could also say that among the art community we differ depending on subject, media or message. A portrait painter is more specialized in training and purpose than the artist who paints anonymous faces and figures.

The other question deals with personality, behavior, and whether or not there exists differences in temperament or certain skills to the exclusion of others. I, for one, resent suggestions that I, the artist, would not as likely understand matters of business and politics "because you are an Artist" and it would seem that variables of skill, abilities, and perspective contribute to the richness of offering in the marketplace.

If insight and communication are peculiar to artist how does that make them different than musicians, poets, and philosophers?

Stanka, I don't listen to my hairdresser either. But that is not enough. All one has to do in my community is walk past the local Art School to see why there are many who think us odd. Many of the students have enough piercings to make them valuable in the scrap market. And I don't believe any combinations of known oil colors could match the hair colors on display.

[Mike McCarty]

Ohhh Linda, you get an A double + for catching my omission. I never liked that vegetable part.

[Jean Kelly]

My first husband and I divorced because I was too "different". My second husband married me because I was so "different".

Jean

Different strokes!

[Linda Fried]

I have long said "I'm totally right-brained", and blamed my lack of discipline on being so. It's a convenient excuse.

Artists are probably more right-brained in their (our) make up. I don't consider myself emotionally frail, but I have all my life been told how "different", "unique", etc., I am -- and believe me, it's not a compliment in many instances!

I have always marched to the beat of my own, singular, drummer. I feel things more than anyone I know; I am an extreme empathetic. It follows, therefore, that I see things differently, because I feel them.

I have long kept a pad of paper on my nightstand, because I will awaken with a vision or a phrase (most often) running through a dream, or my conscious or semiconscious brain. It might be a word. Often it is. I need to write it down, because I have learned that it is some "divine" inspiration, and I don't know the importance it holds yet, whether it will become a painting, a poem, a story, a book. I just know it means something. Other times it will be in a dream, but one from which I awake, knowing I must write it down.

My waking hours are the same. I am often in my own world, and having been divorced for nearly 8 years, and having the luxury of living alone, I find it makes me more of that "different, unique" person I have long been told I am.

I'm almost to the point where I am no longer fit company for any living being -- often myself! But I thank God every day that I was blessed (and cursed) with my way of feeling and seeing things.

Now if I could just translate them to the canvas successfully!

Linda

Here's a link to determining your left/right brain dominance:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~devstud/advisor...dominance.html

[Valerie Gudorf]

Linda,

Thanks for the link to the Left-brained/Right-brained test. I took it also, and it confirmed without a doubt that I am predominantly right-brained. Overwhelmingly so, to my own detriment even. I have always marched to the beat of my own drum---problem is, my rhythm is usually lousy! I keep thinking, "If I could only get it all in one sock!" But schedules and lists are to me what garlic is to a vampire. I do try to follow them, however. It's my only hope of ever becoming an organized, fully functioning person, capable of accomplishing anything.

I don't know about other artists, but often times, I definitely feel "different": Sometimes like a rare flower, other times like a complete freak.