The New Rip Van Winkle…
Nearly 50 years ago, when leaving school, I toyed with the idea of attending a one-year Arts Foundation Course at one of the most prestigious and internationally recognised Art Schools based in Central London. I remember reading the colourful and attractive prospectus for the course and thinking how much I would enjoy what it had to offer over the year. However, my life took a different direction and ended up missing Art School. Now, fifty years later, having worked in a wide range of businesses, I am returning to my original vocation.
I feel like Rip Van Winkle… who spent twenty years lost in a deep sleep (although, in my case it is nearly half a century!) and then he woke up in a new very changed world. I recently looked at the latest prospectus of the Foundation Course from the same Art School. My memory might not be so great, but it appears that the core and integral subjects that were offered back in the day and were definitive to the Art School are unavailable and no longer pursued. The introduction of a more technological and digitally orientated syllabus (if that is the right word) has tended to override the basic artistic training I was motivated by. It has all become too conceptual. Consequently, I have researched a wide variety of courses, all online (I am too old now to go back to any educational establishment) from three to twelve-year degrees to a one-year diploma. In many respects, they initially looked attractive but somehow it became all too apparent to me that much of the important foundational and basic training in any artist’s practice appear marginalised and given little importance.
On further digging, the teaching of the traditional techniques, skills and practices for painters were not offered or readily available as core at any university level art school. In the private sector, there were many courses available but very few of any material duration and most were rather narrow and limited in their offerings. So after much cogitation, I have decided to navigate my own course designing and constructing my own practices to achieve my ambition to be a painter. Over the last two years, the COVID pandemic has allowed me to work relatively freely in my studio at home. Initially, I was very excited at the prospect of being so free to draw and paint. The reality is, it’s not quite that simple.
The transition from being a disciplined businessman to a freethinking artist/painter does not occur easily or overnight. Apart from the occasional course attended in holidays or weekends, I had only dabbled with my art. Like any new endeavour, one needs to practice and train to improve; without self-criticism and failures, one will never make material progress. The next factor that became very clear to me was that I needed to engage with people of a similar disposition to take my practice further.
I have been very lucky to find an extraordinarily talented artist who lives locally and, who loves to teach. To date, we have conducted ten workshops covering a variety of topics which have, in some areas, engendered a much greater understanding of the subject and I have enjoyed a significant lift in my ability.
When Rip Van Winkle emerged from his twenty years sleep, he had missed the American Revolution and was at a loss to understand the new world as he found it. I similarly have some issues with the current interpretation as to what counts as Art compared to what I thought a half century ago.
The Art world has always been somewhat over-liberalised by nature. However, I am often told that one is free of all rules or conventions and that anything goes. Anything is acceptable and anyone may be called an artist. My key issue with this tenet is that in any other discipline e.g., music, cookery, writing etc. there are strict guidelines that, if broken, result in complete failure: a recipe followed without the correct ingredients, quantities or cooking time, or some music played without following the score closely will always result in catastrophe. Nevertheless, visual artists are allowed to express themselves without adhering to any of the traditional conventions that ensure that art is good. A topic for another day!
This is my first “News and Views” and I want to make it as interesting and readable as possible. I want to cover many topics and update you, the reader, on my progress. I am sure there will be some serious pitfalls and hopefully some successes along the way so please be patient and enjoy my news and views as well as some opinions, some controversial, some not.
Cheers. John