Self-Taught Artists Emerge after Grueling Hard Work and Physical Pain

"Cafe Costa Rica" 20x20 acrylic on canvas (SOLD), Prints available

As a self-taught artist myself, I wanted to shine a light on the anguish and healing that many of us share in common. I’ve chosen a few artists that are famous and well-known, and a few who never got above the sad circumstances of their lives until long after their deaths.

Many artists were driven to art in the process of mending from a long-term illness or accident. Once they tasted the sweet wine of creation, they found the healing balm of discovery and newness of life. While their minds and hearts were caught up in the rapture of creativity, they forgot about self-pity and pain and unleashed it instead upon paper, wood and canvas. 

My own early beginnings happened after a painful divorce. Remarkable magic occurs when emotions travel from brain and heart through the arm, into the fingers, down the brush and onto a blank surface. Explosions of the mind keep you focused and stayed on what’s happening before your eyes. The smoothness of paint encourages experimentation and afterward, you are never the same.

Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 and died in 1954. In 1922, she entered the National Preparatory School with the intent to study medicine and medical illustration. Three years later, she was in a near-fatal bus accident, which left her with many broken bones, including her legs, ribs, back, and collarbone. While recovering from the accident, she began to paint.

In 1928, she sought out Diego Rivera, a Mexican Rivera, for advice on her works, and would later marry him. Her paintings were surrealist. She used bright colors, and often depicted Mexican folk themes. Her first one-woman art show was in New York in 1938. In 1953, she had her first solo show in Mexico. Her work began to gain more attention in the 1970s, and many of her works are displayed in her former residence. Her bright outdoor scenes and bold self-portraits continue to amuse and delight us.

(Henri Rousseau -- Fight between a tiger and a buffalo)

Henri Rousseau was a post-Impressionist painter who was born in 1844 and died in 1910. He worked for a lawyer and a toll collector to support his mother and wife. It was his job as a toll collector that would earn him the nickname "Le Douanier" (customs office.) Ridiculed during his lifetime by critics, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality.

Rousseau began to paint in his early 40's and would retire at 49 to focus on painting full-time. He taught himself by copying art displayed at the Louvre, but would go on to establish his own style of painting. His paintings are noted for their flat style and great imagination. His most famous works depict jungle scenes, though he never saw a jungle. Several of his paintings are on display at the Louvre.

Winslow Homer was an American landscape artist who was born in 1836 and died in 1910. He was mainly self-taught and spent 20 years as a commercial illustrator before taking up oil painting full-time. He would open his own studio in New York City in 1859 and started to take classes at the National Academy of Design. By this time, he was already producing a great number of works. His early paintings often depict rural farm scenes. Later paintings would display marine subjects, such as fishermen and boating. He would later become best known for his paintings with marine themes.

Riet van Halder is a Dutch housewife who began to draw and paint at the age of fifty-nine after a voice urged her to do so while she was vacuuming the house.” Her family found it strange to see her suddenly become absorbed in painting. In the Netherlands, she had easy access to a vast array of ink, paint, and other media, which she explored in her art. She preferred paint applied with a multitude of implements on a variety of high quality paper and linen. Fittingly, she used a varied color palette. Her paintings are often densely populated with swirling, free form human and animal figures, which have predominately benevolent expressions.

“Her drawings are a response to an imagined world that is revealed, dreamlike, in the act of drawing and painting.” She explained that after finishing a work she was as captured by its beauty and mystery as a first time viewer. In 2004, her ability to create was ended abruptly by chemotherapy, which she received for a melanoma on her ear.

Woodie Long grew up in a family of twelve in a racially mixed sharecropping community in Plant City, Florida. As a young man, he worked as a sharecropper and itinerant laborer. He told me that he had picked just about every crop that existed in the southeastern US. Most of his life, Long was employed as a professional contract painter. This work took him as far as Saudi Arabia, where he met his wife, Dot. Long said that there he became acquainted with the Prince, now King, while painting the Palace and other Royal buildings. Dot and Woodie subsequently traveled for a year in Southeast Asia before they settled in south Alabama to be near family.

Long began his memory paintings in 1988 while recuperating from a respiratory illness brought on by long-term exposure to oil paint. 

He was a great storyteller, and was often encouraged by family and friends to recount his own experiences. He saw his wife’s hobby watercolor set as a good way to record his memories. Long certainly knew how to handle a brush and during his career had experimented occasionally with painting figures. He told me that on jobs, he often created a large image on each wall before painting over it.

Melissa Polhamus was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. She is the adopted daughter of a U.S. military serviceman and his wife and grew up in several different East Coast military towns. She earned a degree in history from Virginia Polytechnic University. “In 1989, she began to draw from her own imagination while recuperating from depression suffered in the wake of an automobile accident.”

Polhamus is self-taught as an artist. Her undiluted watercolor and ink drawings are characterized by intense, densely fragmented compositions. “She has described the process of creating these works as entirely spontaneous and intuitive.” They have a dreamlike narrative quality in which convoluted environments are typically inhabited by cartoonish clothed figures as they carry out various activities that are alternately mundane, mysterious, or sinister, through a labyrinth of interconnected spaces. “Her drawings often include peculiar vehicles, weaponry, musical instruments, stylized vegetation and jaggedly geometric patterns that contribute to a pervasive sense of anxiety.” They are mysteriously compelling and consistently original in style. From a distance, the palette and patterns of her work may resemble certain Mexican Folk drawings.

Thank you to the following Gallery for providing these bios and paintings:

Beyond the Highways and Byways – a Journey of Heart and Soul

"Arabesque" oil on canvas

The above canvas was painted from a pond near my home. The birds were those I see fluttering in and out almost every day; the great egrets and the snowy egrets. Herons come frequently as do anhinga and the little blues (small herons); but I wanted white birds against the dark water.

When someone told me that my work reminded them of the Highwaymen of early Florida, I thought it was a backhanded insult. The Highwaymen were unschooled black people who taught themselves to paint and then sold their wares on the cheap to tourists driving along the roadways and trails.

 For the most part, I was a self-taught artist much like them. Finally, their work has gained the recognition it deserves. According to their web site, “The Florida Highwaymen Artists” were the start of Florida's contemporary art tradition, and are credited for the beginning of the "Indian River School" art movement.

“They developed their own individual techniques and captured waterscapes, back country marshes, and inlets the way they once were before recent tourism developments.

“From the beginning, there were people who collected Florida Highwaymen art and paintings. However only in recent years has the recognition of their skill and their story caused their paintings to skyrocket in value.  In 2004, twenty-six individuals were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame as "Florida Highwaymen."

To read their names go to this link:  http://www.floridahighwaymenpaintings.com/highwaymen_artists

Artists who work hard for their degrees and accolades often resent the success of those who are less educated than they . The work of self-taught artists as they struggle to improve their skill through error and practice is sometimes looked upon with a critical eye and disdain. Like the highwaymen of the past, these artists may not have the funds or wherewithal for supplies let alone education.

I became acquainted with an African artist who asked if I could purchase some brushes and send them to him. He had been painting on brown paper bags for lack of a canvas. Some use wood from nearby palm trees or they paint on shells or other natural surfaces from their environment.

Painters in Iraq and other war torn countries face the same difficulties. Yet their artwork is vibrant, sometimes shocking, and unquestionably moving. When will we mature enough as artists to recognize that art is communication? It represents who we are, what we feel and what we have experienced.

Art can teach us about other people in a way that words cannot. Whether it’s the beauty we see that we wish to share, or the pain and anguish of a broken world, or the loss of a loved one. 

How we experience art tells us a lot about ourselves. Do we recognize beauty for what it is or does our critical eye keep us from hearing the message? Are we able to see beyond cultural barriers into the soul of another? Do our prejudices produce a wall instead of a door? Do we see the “thorn on the rose” rather than the bloom?

"Window on Pine Island" Oil on wrapped canvas.

Innovate or Placate? Experiment or Languish? How’s your Painting Libido?

Some artist’s are making a big splash. They are non-conformists doing things their way. Not afraid of criticism or worried about “staying in line,” they follow their gut instincts; and in the process, they’re making money. Wish that were you?

Self taught artists probably have more daring. What have they got to lose? But there are artists who get bored by the tried and true methods of the past and just want to make waves. They want their art to sizzle and sing. They manage to push the envelope to the outer limits.

Don’t get me wrong. These artists have already proven themselves in traditional ways. They are color and value experts who wave the brush expertly and intelligently. They also follow trends. They understand that what’s popular today may not be hot tomorrow. They have found a way to capitalize on the here and now in hopes of making some money and it seems to be working.

I watched a street artist use nothing but spray paint and window scrapers as a brush. The work was not as crude as I’d expected. He layered colors from light to dark, and while still wet, expertly scraped off top layers to expose the light. Shapes formed. Buildings appeared. Different sized palette knives and scrapers exposed a cityscape and a sunset. The end result was breathtaking.

His “street art” was produced quickly and expertly. The wrapped canvas paintings sold like hotcakes! People were intrigued. They were in awe as landscapes and city streets appeared in living color. The canvases were affordable and inspiring. This artist had found a way to tap into the pulse of the buyers who lived and worked in the city.

Chloe Morris Sketchbook

Who is your audience? Does your work appeal to the culture and clime of potential buyers or are you focused on your own drumbeat drowning out the sounds of the marketplace? Do you live in a seaside community or a rural farm area? Do your buyers hail from suburbia or Harlem? Who do you want to reach? How do you want to touch them or influence them? Does your work have universal appeal or is it specific?

These are questions every artist needs to ask before proceeding with a work. If you paint only to please yourself, you may have only an audience of one.

Movements Come and Go but Others have Staying Power

Some call it folk art, others prefer primitive or naive art; still others attach mod-sounding names onto it like pop surrealism or steam punk. Each is unique; but according to art critics and those “in the know,” are concocted from the same pot of sub-standard stew called Lowbrow Art.

Who are these authoritative judges who condemn a movement before it even gets out of the box? I call them “elites” who promote the exclusivity that keeps art in a privileged category for the few. Thank goodness these labels don’t apply to everyone. Today, lowbrow artists and their followers are finally getting noticed and their work is showing up in well-known galleries across the globe.

When you think of lowbrow art what comes to your mind? I usually think of science fiction, comic book illustrations and tattoos in that order. Why has it become so popular? Because it appeals to the masses either for its humor, sarcasm, or brashness.

Wickipedia writes: “Museums, art critics, mainstream galleries, etc., have been uncertain as to the status of lowbrow in relation to the fine art world, and today it has been largely excluded - although this has not stopped some collectors from buying the works. Some art critics doubt that lowbrow is a "legitimate" art movement, and there is thus very little scholarly critical writing about it. The standard argument of critics is that critical writing arises naturally from within an art movement first, and then a wider circle of critics draws upon this writing to inform their own criticism.”

Wikipedia’s definition is already becoming outdated as digital artists get wider exposure on the Internet. Their statement also reveals the blatant snobbery that exists in the art community. There, I’ve said it!

This attitude reminds me of the Emperor who stood stark naked before a circle of his peers while his tailors declared that, indeed, the Emperor was dressed, and his accouterments were exceedingly fine in order to cover up their own uncertainty and incompetence.

Many lowbrow artists are self-taught, which further alienates them from the world of museum curators and art schools. The educated, the elite, have the power to designate who will be seen, supported and exposed while the truly avant-garde continue to push the envelope and explore new means of expression literally under the radar.

This is one of my favorites! Well done.

Will elitists get left behind in the coming age of advancing technology? What do the critics say about these new genres? Will popular opinion and dollars weigh in? Love to hear your opinions!

http://youtu.be/HWKIoyFTV50   Check out this Fabulous  Trailer New Wave of high-tech art and animation.

The New York Times said of an exhibit in the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: “At first, surrealism and popular culture seem to be oil and water. Surrealism mines dreams and the unconscious, while pop culture is concerned with surface and commonplaces. But in recent years they have been brought together in exhibitions concerned with proving that high and low are related."^[12]Kirsten Anderson, who edited a second book called Pop Surrealism, considers lowbrow and pop surrealism to be related but distinct movements.^[13] However, Matt Dukes Jordan, author of Weirdo Deluxe, views the terms as interchangeable.

Featured Artist

Abril Andrade Griffith In a world that moves fast, few things in life have the ability to make one stop and take a deep breath; few things allow you to become lost in a dream. The art of Abril does just that. Being transported into a wonderland, there is a sense of whimsical innocence paired effortlessly with creepy delusion.

Abril is well known all over the world for her cute, dark, abstract intense work. Her work can be found internationally in tattoo shops, galleries, and private art collections. Abril has been featured and published by major magazines. A link to her gallery on Fine Art America is beside her featured painting.

 http://fineartamerica.com/featured/oh-el-amor-abril-andrade-griffith.html

Who is more Talented (Qualified): The Graduate or the Gifted?

"My great granddaughter, Kayla, looking through a door window. I'm going to turn
this into a painting titled: "Looking Outward" (implying looking toward the future).

A debate is ongoing in "Linked in" about this question: “Do you need a degree to be a successful artist?”

The initiator of that question was not necessarily supporting this idea, but simply generating discussion. She even suggested that perhaps amateurs and those less educated should stay out of the market and away from art shows. She wondered if just anyone who applies paint to canvas should be allowed to call themselves an artist.

This topic got my blood and that of others to boil. For one thing, the insinuation disregards innate talent, self-education obtained through taking classes, and the hours of practice and skill obtained through one’s own efforts.

"A friend gave me an old window I am going to use as a frame. The child will be
painted on the surface of the glass in oils."

Even though a good art education gives you a wonderful foundation and a solid infrastructure of knowledge to hang your hat on, rarely does someone begin a successful career the minute the miter board comes off and the gown is retired.

My journey was long and hard fought. While raising six children, my time was not only limited, but so was the money. Extra funds went into piano lessons and athletic activities for the children. When I had more time, the extra money went into their college educations

.

I had an insatiable appetite for learning. Since we made many trips to the Public Library in those days, selecting books I could read to my children and those they could read on their own, I checked out books for myself, and read those I couldn’t while we were there.

"I'm going to use this scene as a background; painted separately on canvas that
will be attached from behind, creating depth."

I know from previous experience that in classes at university, your mind may wander, and you may get distracted. You prepare for tests rather than for life. When you’re self-taught, the motivation is a driving force from within. It’s a hunger that propels you from one step to another. To say that this kind of learning is inadequate or invaluable is like saying that life itself is a waste of time.

Every experience we have, every piece of knowledge we retain and remember is valuable and adds to the enormous amount of information a person obtains over a lifetime. Additionally, when the mind is focused on the prize, or on the subjects that are loved, information is hungrily consumed and digested. Skills are developed through diligent practice and painful but revealing error. Time is used wisely because to waste it would corrupt the passion that is a driving force.

To say that we have no right to practice what we’ve worked diligently to achieve is ludicrous, with or without acquired credentials. Someone remarked that in order to call yourself a Doctor, you must have paid the price or you can’t practice medicine. If you don’t have a law degree, you cannot then become an attorney. Does art then fall into this same category?

"This small dog will be included in the background. He
is looking up at the child, wanting to come in."

The detractors have a point, to a point. But in the arts, innate gifts and hard work trump all. There is something to be said for obtaining a degree. It tells the world that you spent time and money to gain knowledge in your field. The diploma allows you to teach with authority.

But a bird doesn’t fly until he flaps his wings and leaves the nest. And what about those child prodigies you see on “America’s got Talent?” How does a 13 year old child sing like a professional without training? How does an artist touch the hearts and minds of viewers without a degree?

The soul is the instrument upon which God plays. Who can explain beauty except from personal perception? Who can measure inborn talent in the quest for perfection? To limit the scope of who has a right to perform and when is to stifle all that we cherish about free speech and self fulfillment.

Since this is a "mixed-media" project, the dog and background will be painted in acrylic on canvas. The child in oil on top of the glass. I also want to add a folding drape over the blanket and onto the frame, to give the whole window a three-dimensional look.

"fabric soaked in Elmer's glue and water will be added as a drape, to create a
three-dimensional matching blanket overflowing onto the frame."