The Artist

Yesterday, my art instructor really hit a chord. I usually zone in and out of her random rambles, but she made a point really clear and obvious that I never realized. She said that being an artist is a loner activity or career. I had no idea what she meant at first but as she went on it all made sense. The artist isolates himself, comes up with ideas alone, and creates a work all alone. The artist does present this work to others but only the artist understands the work in its entirety. No one else knows all the meanings behind it, the inspirations and thoughts that went into it, the exact procedures it took to produce it, and all the flaws or details that artist may or may not have intended to put in it. Being an artist, in a sense, is self-gratifying because you do not have to satisfy anyone but yourself and your own inspirations and intent.

This all may sound really obvious to some of you, but I never realized this at all. I think what hit the chord the hardest for me was the parallel between the artist and the loner. I have always considered myself an outsider or loner I guess. It is not that I don't have friends or anything like that, but I always feel and felt that there is some kind of distance between me and even the closest people I know. I guess hearing that connection from my art teacher was just something to make some sense of my own identity.