Hi Steemians, hope you all had a lovely weekend. Today I am sharing a bit of a different post but one that I am quite passionate about - my experience of art school, I would love to hear your experience's if you have been to one too! I hope you enjoy the post! - Verity x
Before I became a professional wedding photographer I loved doing my own fine art photography, even from the age of 4 I was picking up my parents cameras and using them, but never did I consider pursuing it as a career. I wanted to be an artist, in what I wasn't sure, but I knew art was where I wanted to go! I have never really trained in photography, I went to Art College and then I did a Fine Art University course but didn't study photography, I did painting and other forms of art and then when the photography section of the course came around and we were taught how to develop our own film and were given a film camera to rent I was hooked! Now, almost 12 (scary!) years later and probably 80 film cameras that I've collected I am still as in love with it as when I first developed that first film! Although I didn't get taught how to take photographs at art college or on my university fine art course, what I did learn was that apparently to make it as a fine art photographer there needs to be a story behind each of your photographs.
After an intensive year art course I knew I wanted to keep it going so chose to do Art at University, after a short while I knew photography was my strong point and as I had learned after being there for just a few months a story was what I needed! So I started taking photographs and then making up reasons and weird stories as to why, it became normal. I would take a series of photographs and spend 1, if not 2, weeks coming up with a story as to "why". I would submit them to the tutors who took in my stories and were enthralled by them, but after a while I realised it was just not me, I didn't ever understand why you had to have a story, and most of the time the sadder or politically appealing the story was the higher points or attention you would get.
On my uni course I was literally being judged against people who presented a plastic container of their own sick (yes!) and another who filled buckets with candle wax. Now I am not saying whether their "art" was good or not but I don't really feel that I was in the right place for my photographs, that I took just because I wanted to, to be judged against something completely the other end of the scale of art. I made it through my 3 year course doing what they wanted, coming up with obscure stories and sometimes I would get to the point where I would believe them too!! It didn't feel right, but everyone else was doing the same, and they kept questioning me when I couldn't think of why I took a photograph, and saying "just because I wanted to" just wasn't good enough.
So the people on my course drawing pictures as if a child had drawn them got huge credit while I was just sat there thinking what on earth I was getting myself into! I had no idea art had to have THIS much purpose The likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin did amazing things for the art world, but they were the first ones to push the boundaries of what is called "art". But what made them so prolific was that they actually had genuine reasons "why", and what I found on my course was that there were just hundreds of wannabe Hirst's and Emin's wanting to do whatever it took to shock the tutors and the art world that they were going to the ends of the earth to do it, and to be honest most of the time it worked! To me art is just art. It comes in many thousands of forms, but to ME it has to INSTANTLY be visible, so if there is an installation of a light bulb flickering on and off in a art gallery and I can't instantly tell why, to me that is not art. It shouldn't need an essay to go with it. I love installation art, I really do! But there are ways to make it accessible to everyone without all the rubbish behind it.
Another reason I just didn't get the uni course was that we were having to learn about other artists and mimic their work. I actually got in a lot of trouble with one of the tutors for arguing this but I was really just curious! I wanted to know why they thought copying other artists was making US better artists?! Surely being an artist comes from WITHIN. I didn't understand how copying how Picasso paints or painting from a photograph was really teaching us how to be our own artist. My dad has been an artist since I was born, he had no teaching and has made a living on it for nearly 30 years. I'm sure Picasso or Monet didn't study millions of other artists and copy their work. Each famous artist in the World is so completely unique that I found it hard to understand how copying others wouldn't just make us all turn out the same. They weren't allowing us to become our own artist. I am not quite sure what reasons they gave behind it, I probably wasn't listening as much as I would do now (typical teenager!!) but I remember thinking at the time that they didn't really know how to respond. Instead they just said I had to comply with the course or not be on it!
As I wanted to now pursue photography instead of painting it was completely new to me. So I set out taking photographs of everything. Suddenly a whole new world of art had just opened up to me and I was using the camera as more of a paintbrush! It was now my way of expressing myself or just taking photographs of what I liked!! But again the tutors had problems with this, they kept saying I needed to find my niche, I couldn't just keep taking photographs in all these different styles and different subjects I had to just pick one! "But why?!" I said, I loved taking photographs of everything, from landscapes to long exposures to art, people, abstract I wanted to create everything. I said "well is there one that just isn't quite as successful as the others?" and the tutors said no, they saw potential in them all. So against their wishes I just did what I wanted, I took photographs of whatever I wanted and every time I submitted a selection they loved them. Why should we narrow down our creativity? I found it hard to believe that an art course would make you want to do that.
When I left art college ( an intensive 1 year course ) in Wales I really really wanted University to be the same, they gave us so much homework and pushed us to be the best, but after a month of Uni I quickly realised it was not going to be the case. We weren't pushed at all, we were given 8 week periods to submit work and then bring it in, with no guidance only criticism on the work you did in those 8 weeks, how is that useful? But then I kind of came to the conclusion that art just isn't something you can really judge or teach. Sure you can teach someone how to use a camera or a paintbrush but to create a "work of art"is up to them, I think skill only makes up a very small percentage of an artist the rest you must be born with! So I came to terms with what the tutors were doing and just accepted that I was expecting a lot more than was available to me, and although it isn't an excuse for how poor I found this course, they were just finding whatever ways they could to TEACH people art, so if that meant copying others in their mind I guess that was fine!
I ended up being the only person to sell all my final pieces of work at the degree show, out of the WHOLE course. And funnily enough the photographs that sold had NO story attached to them, so the viewer that bought all these photographs bought them for their beauty not the story behind them, I was so happy. I butted head with my tutors a view time on the course, but in the end I think it taught me that you just have to do what you believe in, if you don't believe in your work it will come across and it just won't work. It's like with anything it's all YOUR OPINION and how much you depend or believe the opinion of others!
Whilst I don't regret going to Uni to do art I don't think if I had known how the course was going to be I would have taken it, in the end I grew as an artist on my own and I guess if they had been pushing me to do all this work and homework maybe I wouldn't have had the time to grow on my own. I still think that to be an artist comes from within so to anyone who has ever been told they need a "why" I say you just tell them "because I wanted to" and to me that is a good enough reason!
- Verity x
Photography by me and copyrighted to me.
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