Previous: Part 3: What Makes Something Art? Beyond Representation When I was young, I assumed that art was supposed to depict something such as a person, a place, an object, or a scene. That isn’t surprising. Most of us are introduced to art through representation. We learn to draw what...
TOMCT: My Kid Could Do That
Previous: Part 1: What Do You See? What Makes Something Art? If you’ve spent any time around contemporary art within the past 100 years, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “My kid could do that.” It is usually delivered with some combination of disbelief, amusement, and irritation. I’ve heard variations of...
MMARS: The Myth of Natural Talent — The Gifted Artist
Previous: Part 3: What Makes Something Art? The Myth of Natural Talent People love stories about natural talent – the child who could draw before anyone taught them, the musician who could play by ear, the athlete who seemed to move differently from everyone else, the artist who supposedly picked...
CEXES: Learning to See
Previous: Part 1: What Do You See? Learning To See In the first part of this series, I wrote about the difference between looking and seeing. We all look at the world, but experience changes what we actually notice. The longer I thought about that idea, the more I realized...
ZIRIN: What Do You See?
Previous: Part 2: Building a Design Studio During the Great Recession What Do You See? What do you see when you look at a piece of artwork? More specifically, what do you see when you look at one of mine? Some people see circles. Others see lines, shapes, colors, or...
FONAX: Aviation, Texas, and the Value of Starting Over
Previous: Part 2: Building a Design Studio During the Great Recession Sometimes the Best Solution Is to Begin Again Not long ago, I wrote about a productive period of creative work that followed a brief beach vacation. Returning to the studio with renewed focus, I quickly completed several new pieces...