The humanity of art

I’m a bit of a dabbler or is that a scribbler when it comes to art.

Whatever it is, I’ve arrived at the point where I rarely refer to myself as an artist.

The knock backs were intense and took place when I was still a tender teenaged angsty AF child.

Those wounds apparently run too deep for me to ignore even now, decades after.

Still, art for me is not about perfection. I have a mantra – the only perfect people are dead cos they be the only ones who kinna make mistakes no more.

I know this cerebrally though because my heart yearns for some kind of perfection, some kind of ‘ah-ha’ moment where all my critics will fall on their knees in tears and rue the perfection that they had been previously blind to.

Then I remind myself that’s not about the art, is it.

So, would you now believe that the process of making art is a little about healing? No?

I ran a meditative art class for a year for some very busy folk.

One hour a week, you show up without any projects in mind.

There’s no destination, no final form, just expression. Grab a medium and allow yourself to feel it in use. That’s all.

If you recognise this at all, you just might be right. It’s ‘morning pages’ only with art materials instead.

There was much resistance and most of the resistance was external. Not the spirit inside yelling no. The resistance was from the outside voices gatekeeping what artistic expression should be like.

All this rambling (I did warn you) just to say that art cannot be perfect as long as it’s an expression of humanity. Cos perfect, we ain’t.

Still, my tutor said to me, if only I could learn to perfect my edges, I would be a much better artist. A part of me still agrees with her.