by Barbara Guess

Created on: February 07, 2009

When you study art at school you are being introduced to technical knowledge and experience from the past. To start with you look at the world and try to interpret what you are seeing in the artistic or creative format that you are using. If it is a drawing you are doing, you look at your subject and the impression you have in your mind of the subject is what you try to record on the paper. But always there is someone who will look at your finished work and tell you that there is something wrong, perhaps the angles of perspective, too much light or shadow, even that the composition is not aesthetically pleasing.

Who is right, the original artist or the critic? The first necessity is an interest in creating something that reflects the beauty of life, perhaps in colour, with shape, texture and form. Beauty of life can be something that challenges the viewers imagination, that gives a hint to arouse feelings of nostalgia, tranquillity, arousal or hatred.

Is the artistic skill the technical learning of colour mixing, knowing the hints of colour to make a sunset or the colour of shadows? Is a building drawn with the incorrect perspective less of a portrayal of the actual building than a photograph, or can it still be recognised in its distorted format, after all it is supposedly an artists impression of what they visually want you to see and feel from the representation.

Works of art carry more than one meaning, maybe a story, or the history of an event. It could be a suppressed call to change the viewers feelings on a certain contentious issue or it could be purely to please, to give pleasure.

Why do we appreciate art and why are some artists more popular than others? Is this the difference between the natural and the learned skill, that the viewer only appreciates accurately matched and mixed colours with the correct tonal values that record nature as we see it.

When you consider the ancient pictures daubed on cave walls from coloured muds, is there any doubt in anyones mind that the pictures are of what the artists experienced in life in all its wild fury, huge angry beasts, basic weapons, tools and hunting men. The natural colours, mellowed with age and the simplistic figures are still pleasing to the eye and beyond value for their historic portrayal of mankinds first steps into civilisation. Does any critic dare to criticise the artistic value of this natural skill and talent? Does anybody look at the pictures without feeling the raw and powerful beauty of what is portrayed in its basic purity of form.

This leads us towards considering artistic skill as a natural rather than a learned skill; but perhaps it needs some catalyst to bring out the full potential of the artist, to allow access to the various mediums that are available and enable them to find their pure inner voice and this is where the learned aspect of the skill comes in.

Learn more about this author, Barbara Guess.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.