The Subjectivity of Art, or How I Decided to Start Calling Myself an Artist
An illustration of floppy disks
I always wanted to be an artist, but the problem is that I’ve never been good at art in a technical sense (and frankly, I never had the attention span to learn). I thought you had to be able to draw and paint to be an artist, and that was something I could never quite figure out. I remember in eighth grade art class, they had us do a drawing of a tiger by filling in square by square. I got so lost in the grid that I lost track. My drawing ended up more abstract than I intended it to be. I felt so bad that I probably threw the drawing away. There was no way someone like me could be an artist, I thought.
I tried to go to art school, but they said my portfolio needed a clearer direction, and at that point, I didn’t have it. After that, I largely gave up and went to college to study journalism. I still did photography, one of my longest running hobbies, and I played around with Illustrator and InDesign in some of my classes, but I wasn’t really making art.
About a year after I graduated from college, I began working as a managing editor for a newspaper. Through that role, I began to realize that I didn’t want to just write about art—I wanted to be part of the community. That’s also when I started to become interested in graphic design. One of my roles was to help with formatting and editing the text and some of the content for the issues, and it was one of my favorite things to do. I even helped out when the art director was out of town a couple of times.
My next job gave me the opportunity to practice and hone those skills. I did everything from logos to brochures to flyers, and I noticed that every time I would design, I’d get lost in it. A couple of years ago, I began to focus more on graphic design and vector illustration, and I haven’t looked back.
My art isn’t traditional by any means, but I like it, and it’s fun to make.
I don’t like that I felt like I had to be good at traditional art to call myself an artist. If I couldn’t draw, I couldn’t do it. But as I’ve discovered, that’s just not the case. Art comes in all shapes and sizes, whether that’s someone who can paint a realistic still life of a vase of flowers or someone like me who does the same thing but does a flat vector illustraiton. Art is subjective. There is, nor should there be, any right or wrong answer to what art should look like (unless, of course, the art is hurting something or someone).
Maybe an impressionist painter wouldn’t like or understand my work, but you know what? That’s okay. The art I make isn’t for everyone. It’s bright and colorful and deeply rooted in the modern era. I make art because it makes me happy and because this world needs a little more color, fun, whimsy. I make art because I can.
And I am an artist because I make art.
