I am working on my first book at the moment, The Self-Taught Oil Painter’s Guide, so this question has been on my mind and heart a lot lately.
Art is free; Art has no rules or constraints. Education is what has rules and constructs. These truths can be good or bad or a little of both. Mostly they are neither, they just are. On the one hand, creativity is freedom and in full freedom we can grow and evolve naturally. Like a tree growing in the forest versus in a garden—Both will be beautiful but they will likely look very different in 10, 20, 30 years. On the other hand, structure itself can give us some amount of freedom. Creativity within a structured environment can be harnessed and directed. I think this comes down to personality—do you need the structure in order to keep going, or will you keep creating no matter what?
Art has no inherent rules. That’s the whole beauty of being an artist—you get to bring forth whatever is inside of you, in whatever way you choose. It is completely free and freeing.
Education, however, has rules. The hallmark of any educational system is its hierarchy of rules and regultions and the specified order in which we all must do a thing. And when we go to school for art, we are taught an often very specific set of rules or guidelines, especially when it comes to oil paint. In fact, you won’t even be allowed to touch oil paint until you have gone through the prescribed set of prerequisite courses.
I meet a lot of artists who went to traditional art school, and many of them—while grateful for the experience—will describe themselves as “recovering” from all the rules they were taught. Some artists are even still following outdated practices that they just never considered changing, as they were learned in the hallowed walls of a higher education art studio. (Then again, one thing all classically trained artists will agree on is that it is time to forget what they are taught about making money as artists!)
Being a self-taught artist allows us to find our own best way of doing things. Of course, we may find out years later that we were doing something “wrong” and maybe this is a terrible thing or maybe it is a funny thing. That probably again depends upon your personality…I think we all know I find these moments funny. And believe me I’ve had a few.
I love the path I took to being an artist. Did I waste a ton of time and money and supplies? Heck yea I did. But I learned a lot, and much of the “wasted time” was spent doing something very meditative, which in itself contribute to my creative process. I would fall down these beautiful rabbit holes of experimentation and I would allow myself to go down them, ignoring the obvious option of just googling an answer. This really re-connected me with my inner child, and the remembered feeling of getting lost inside a question or a process, in a way we dont often allow ourselves to do in today’s world.
I also love and highly value the knowledge that my classically trained artist friends so freely share with me along the way. When I do or say something “stupid” online, there is always some kind soul who reaches out through DM, gently letting me know that maybe I want to try it a different way. Or when I have a “stupid question” moment and I don’t feel like wading through the google responses, so I just text a friend. I have second-handedly benefited greatly from others’ art degrees and for that I am grateful.
These days there are so many short and sweet (or longer of course) courses online, and that is an amazing thing. I love knowing that I can take a quick course in some area that I would like to grow my practice further. This wasn't really the case just a few years ago. In today’s world anyone can be an artist and that is a beautiful thing.
Are you self-taught or classically trained? What do love about your particular path?