Looking back through the years, I do not remember when I started painting with oils and watercolors… maybe I was about 13. To be honest mostly of I know today has come from my own experiences of try and error.
To me, making a painting was never an issue but something that happens naturally with whatever materials come to my hands. Oils are my favorites, but recently I’ve been painting in a very quick method and found out that a mixture of acrylics, oils, glitter and others mediums work better for my new style.
In the past 3 years I decided to do a Fine Art degree as a nice “add on” to my previous qualifications. To my disappointment, I have learn nothing new but of a chaotic, hypocrite and delusional world from the Art teachers.
If you an artist with already some success and experience I recommend you to aim higher and not to go back to an educational institution. You see, despite your good intentions you setting yourself back and giving your own murder sentence to the chances of being ‘stepped on’ and muffled by the tutors, who also called themselves artists. You must have no previous artistic experience because no matter how you try to please and befriend this so called “artist teachers” you will always be seen as a threat rather than a student.
Unfortunately we live in a world that demands all this qualifications to be taken seriously. I have learned from my own mistakes, maybe because I was a bit naïve, full of dreams and hopes that a new qualification would push my career further, but realize that I brought this to myself to the point I had nothing but verbal abuse, bullying, harassment, intimidation and discrimination from lecturers. In the end I felt from as high I dreamed and have gain nothing but a new pretty BA words in my cv and an awful demoralizing experience I must rather forget!
More new painting in my redesigned website www.magicpaintings.com
Wow, Angela, this is a discouraging post, particularly from as an experienced, hard-working, and talented artist as yourself.
Did your instructors claim to be trying to “shape you up” — that is, make you practice skills you thought no applicable? Or did they deride you for your well-honed style and approaches?
I find it inconceiveable that professors imagine they are teaching when what they are really doing is putting students in their (lesser) place. My experience has been almost totally other, but it has also been outside the normal BFA degree — I’ve worked primarily through evening courses or adult ed classes, which sometimes are frustrating because the instructors are too positive, too lacking in clear instruction and too indirect in their instructions. Your experience sounds the opposite.
At any rate, congratulations on surviving the hazing. I hope the degree makes your life easier, since getting it has caused so much misery.
The first image here is magical indeed. It has the same feel as early images you showed on A&P; the second one is almost the direct opposite (while stylistically being similar) in “feel.” Fascinating juxtaposition.
Angela,
The fullest real-life discussion about art school I happen to know of is on Alec Soth’s erstwhile blog (see extensive comments as well). Quoted there is Dave Hickey, iconoclastic but respected teacher and critic, who appears to agree with you:
I think there’s great variation from school to school, and furthermore it seems that art school experience is much more dependent on student and teacher personalities, increasing the likelihood of bad experiences.
Bad though it may have been, at least you learned that you can get through it. That sounds lame, but it can give you courage for other trials, and actually, that’s a connotation of any degree that may actually be more significant than a specific body of knowledge. Plus it probably helped you define yourself as an artist, if only in reaction to ideas and attitudes you disagreed with.
P.S. Nice web site! I like the way the painting gallery works: fast and no Flash.
June,you said: Did your instructors claim to be trying to “shape you up” — that is, make you practice skills you thought no applicable? Or did they deride you for your well-honed style and approaches?
Well June, I tried everything to please them, in the end I was running out of more ideas. Sometimes no matter how you try it you just not going to be liked…
I also didn’t mention I was the only foreign student ( Portuguese ) in the class.
Steve thanks, my husband made it, he is a web designer.
About my course experience thanks for link too.
The short answer, of course, is no. No artist in any discipline needs an academic degree program to succeed, unless “success” is tied to continuing as an academic – as a teacher, or a researcher of some kind – and the artist lacks professional commendations of sufficient dazzle to overcome the lack of a degree.
I’m sorry you had such a frustrating and dispiriting experience. I also went back for a degree after writing and editing professionally for 17 years and hated almost every frustrating, wretched, demoralizing moment of it. I persevered only because, as Macbeth is given to say, “I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” But there was value in it, albeit largely of a “what not to do, how not to be” nature.
I had no ambition to teach when I embarked on my MFA but fell into it a couple of years after graduating. Speaking as a teacher, there are a few categories of students that I find extraordinarily difficult to teach – and one is the kind of student you were, someone who is already accomplished and actively at work. Usually what the accomplished students want – whether they know it consciously or not – is a safe and quiet place to be productive, disinterested encouragement, occasional suggestions in the form of questions related to technical issues, and information about resources. Also whether they know it consciously or not, they expect to be thought of and treated as peers or colleagues. Some teachers can handle that, some can’t; and some classes (i.e., groups of students gathered for a common purpose) can accommodate that while others can’t. It’s one of the trickier classroom situations that can arise.
All of which, of course, is not a rationale for brutalizing someone who has dedicated a considerable array of resources to being in a classroom. I don’t know why arts programs seem particularly disposed to being cesspools of backbiting, upsmanship, and competitive denigration. Or maybe I’m just naïve about the atmosphere in the other disciplines.
I’m so sorry that you had this awful experience. I can only hope that some benefit arises from it eventually.
Angela,
I love the way that you painted the skin in the first picture and brought the skin tones into the background. I wish that I would live in your town and could apprentice with you.
Sadly, I have to agree with you. For years I thought that I’d never be accepted as a “proper” artist without those important letters BA fater my name. This, despite my having achieved a degree of respectability and success in the art community. So when the opportunity came, I gave up my job and went to university as a mature student. I found the tutors arrogant or uninterested and at the end of four years I had my BA (hons) but nothing more that I couldn’t have gained by my own efforts.
It’s taken me some time to shake off the dulling effects of what training they did give me but I feel like I’m my own man again. Howvere, I now find that access to many of the local galleries is in the hands of people who went on to do their Masters degree at the same institutions.
Sometimes you just can’t win.
Angela, sorry that you had what sounds like a bad experience. Good teachers regardless of the discipline (that should be a hint as what the problem is) are hard to come by. Plus I am not sure that there is a way to teach creativity. I just did a interview with a retired art instructor (Dr. J.G. Grigsby) and his approached to working with his students, regardless of age or abilities seemed to be supportive of what the student wanted. He never ever made it about himself, he seem to always be in service of the student.
Quoting from Bob Martin’s interview with Eugene Grigsby: Tell me about your teaching method?
It seems to me that about half of those who get a university degree in fine art say they hated the experience, while the other half say it was positive. Either way, only a very small percentage of graduates (less than 5%) will make a living as an artist.
As Steve noted, it’s very dependent on both the school and the personalities. Some programs will crank out little clones of the teachers. I was very fortunate: the school I went to (University of North Carolina at Asheville) had good teachers who pushed the students to find their own direction, and then pushed the students as hard as they could in whatever direction they chose. So at any one time, there were people working in representational styles, abstract, performance, encaustic, collage, you name it. It was a very dynamic, exciting, and supportive environment.
I don’t think that a university degree per se is necessarily the right choice. I think an artist needs a vision of what they want their art to be, and they need a lot of dedication and perseverance to just go do it in spite of everything else. A good training program (university or other) will teach you a broad set of technical skills to create and critique your own work, and give you an exposure to a variety of other types of art that you may not have considered. The advantage of a school is that it offers a lot of that in a pre-planned package. Or you can create your own … which is what you’re going to be doing once you get out of the school, anyway!
I have to agree with the comment by Melanie that an artist who goes back to school and wants the teachers to think of them as a peer or colleague is doing themselves a disservice. They’re not a peer or colleague – they’re a student. And they’re in the position of un-learning a lot of their habits. It’s a very difficult situation for both the teacher and student.
My bottom line is that I believe that a good training program of some sort is very important for most artists. You just need to be very careful in choosing one that fits who you are.
Skip I never under any circumstances thought about lecturers as peers or colleagues, firstly because I am still in my twenties and lecturers are above their fifties. How could I see them like that?
Second, lecturers were more interested in destructive criticism than any positive feedback, specially criticizing my sensitive personality rather than my work. You see, I am sentimental and emotional, and they saw it as the perfect soft-spot to often ridicule me in front of the whole class.
My art was different from the whole class being the only foreign, and having more years of experience than the other British students. I couldn’t help it; most of the students just started painting, while I have been painting for a few years already, it doesn’t mean they won’t get to my stage or better.
Teachers often promoted the students they felt they were their style clones and their nationality.
Angela, you didn’t say anything about teachers being peers or colleagues, but someone else made a comment about it and I threw my two cents in since I’d seen it as well. I didn’t make it very clear what I meant and for that I apologize.
Sounds to me like you wound up with a rotten school. Unfortunately, they’re everywhere, and even if you research schools as best you can, sometimes you wind up with one that’s no good, or at least no good for you. On the other hand, there are good schools out there, and hard-working, dedicated teachers … at least one of whom has already posted here! So let’s be fair and recognize them, too.
I have two years of formal university instruction in art and design. I also have a degree in education. While I learned how to use the tools of art and design, no one can give you creativity. In fact, I really feel creativity is repressed in a classroom setting. You are not free to truly experiment, because consciously or unconciously, you are trying to figure out what it is that will please the teacher and get you a good grade. The way the system is set up in the first place almost guarantees a partial, if not full, repression of creativity (this coming from one who has worked in the classroom herself). I hated teaching in large part because I felt it repressed, rather than encouraged, creativity and free thinking. I felt repressed as a teacher because I worried about pleasing those above me who wanted things done a certain way. The classroom is,I feel,by its very nature – physical, social, political and emotional nature, not really conducive to a climit of creative thinking for many people. I have always created best when isolated from others or when learning from books or other media. At those times I am free from the judgment of others to just be able to create. I believe creativity must take place in an environment free of judgment. The creative process must take place first, and when the project is finished, judgment may take place, if and when neccesary. As to whether a college degree benefits you as an artist, I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I have run into people who completely dismiss me as an artist when they find out I don’t have a degree in it. This despite the fact that I have sold numerous paintings and have painted in acrylics, oils, pastels, etc. for over thirty years. None of that experience seems to count with certain people. However, there are famous artists who never got a degree in art either. When I encounter someone who dismisses me as not being a “real” artist I just try to move on and not have any dealings with them. I consider them insecure snobs, anyway. The people who buy my work buy it because they like it and are secure in choosing artwork for themselves. They don’t even really give a hoot who I am, and certainly could care less whether or not I have a degree. At any rate, it has not stopped me from painting or earning a living doing my art or design work. It is a brutal field to be working in, however, and people will use my lack of a degree to try and put me down – especially other artists who are competing with me!
alphabeagle,
It’s disheartening to hear of the negative aspects of the art school experience. I’ve always thought that, from the artist’s perspective, an apprentice-style or studio-based training would make a lot of sense–if you can find the right situation. But that approach doesn’t seem to scale very well, and there’s still the problem of recognition…
Steve – I’ve quit persuing recognition because there seems to be so much bias and so many politics going on in the art world. When you see someone getting accolades whose work is clearly amateurish, it can be disheartening. Then you come to find out they have connections. Also, it is disheartening that a journalist from your local newspaper can pick and choose who they think is an artist and make or break someone’s career. What qualifies them to do this? It is the stupidity of people in general who think because your name appears in the paper, you must really be something! This happened with one artist I know – turns out he was friends with one or more people at the newspaper! Now he’s got “credibility” (recognition) as an artist because one of his journalist friends did an article on him in the newspaper. Like I said – connections!
Alphabeagle and Steve, I just know that I have worked and study my a** off during this degree to please and meet lecturers set goals,so my work to be underestimated academically because I was personally disliked by the lecturers group and not because of its quality.
And yes, favoritism was very big in this University, seen some other students being so extolled for effortless pieces of embarrassing crap… all because they were teachers pets!
Well something I felt was, this teachers lack of talent is something they cannot praise or teach, so bias is all they could provide!
hi angela,
im so sorry for your experience. but it may help people like us who were contemplating on joining an Art School.
your words ring so true. they were criticizing you for nationality.
i wonder what would happen if i joined an Art School.
im colored !!
please know that your talent made them insecure.
you go girl.