So You Want To Be An Artist — Part 2
Article of interest: So You Want To Be An Artist — Part 1
This is a companion article to the one listed above, So You Want To Be An Artist — Part 1. In that article I outlined how you’ll need to master the artists most powerful tool, YOU, if professional art creation is your goal. Knowing yourself, your desires and where you want them to lead you will be the cornerstone of your artistic practice.
In this article I’d like to discuss where you’ll need to be in order to engage in your visual craft.
Picking the right studio or environment.
Wanting to make Art, knowing who you are and what you’re all about is very important to every artists personal practice but it won’t amount to a whole lot if you’ve got nowhere to engage that understanding. Having a space to create your work is another important step along the path to professional artistry.
Question 1: Where could I make my, Art?
This is a good place to start. Most of us, once we’ve got the Art bug nipping at us will find a readily available space and get cracking at our next masterpiece. The space we choose may be a bedroom, livingroom, kitchen or even a closet space. Perhaps a garage is better suited to your needs. Maybe you’ve got an old shed out back which would work.
I’ve personally worked in just about every kind of space. Every room in my house, at one time or another, has observed my painterly ministrations. I spent an entire summer painting inside an old horse barn. I’ve painted at school, at friend’s houses, even in a hotel room or two while I was away for extended periods of time. My table easel has travelled with me to the U.S., across Canada and even to England.
Now, as lucky as it sounds to have had all these spaces available to work in, some were better suited to my needs than others.
Painting in the livingroom wasn’t such a great idea. White carpet is unforgiving when it comes to paint drips. Our basement was better, where the carpet was not nearly as nice and the overhead lighting was darker. The old barn was the best. Due to its derelict status and dirt floors I could make as much of a mess out there as I liked. I could play my music loud and work all night if I wanted. It wasn’t as convenient as a space inside the house but it made better sense in the long run. If you’re a careful artist you could work just about anywhere, or could you?
Let me tell you a little story…
In my last vocational position I found myself in North Carolina working to put together a gelatin factory. I brought my table easel with me as par usual. During the evenings and on my days off I tried to paint but…
Sitting at a tiny table just big enough for your table easel, in an uncomfortable chair, in a frigid, over air-conditioned hotel room with a redneck roommate drunk on Jose Cuervo tequila who’s incessantly playing online poker, yelling invective at the screen, while an overly enthusiastic preacher on a loud speaker is trying to impart ‘The Spirit’ to his revelers in a banquet room down the hall from you, with cockroaches trying to steal what’s left of your dinner, after pulling a 10 hour shift working to pipe in a pigskin rendering factory, is not a situation conducive to art production.
What? Really?
I tried several paintings in that environment and I threw them all away.
You see, technically, you could make Art anywhere. As long as you’ve got your art materials this should be possible — or should it?
Here’s a better question.
Question 2: Where should I make my, Art?
All of us have preferences and the more Art we make the more we’ll get to understand them. Your personal preferences are what have defined your art practice up to this point, why shouldn’t they define the environment you find most conducive to productivity as well?
There are some things you should look at before choosing a space to work in.
Familiarity / Comfort
That hotel room in North Carolina was a bad space for me to work in. I should have known better, but I’m stubborn.
I know I don’t like overly cold workspaces. I don’t like being uncomfortable while I work, either physically or otherwise. I don’t like unfamiliar people near me while I paint. I need either music or a movie, from a genre I like, playing in the background while I work, not “The Best of the World Poker Tour” T.V. show. Country music won’t cut it either. The environment was completely foreign to me.
Familiarity should be your number one criteria when choosing a work space. I’ve tried many times to work in an alien environment and my work has never faired well. Find a space which can be made all yours. This may be a room or a portion of a room in your house. Maybe it’s a rented or purchased professional studio space. It might be an old cattle shed.
Wherever it is, make sure you can customize it a bit, give it some flair from your personal vault of style. Make it as comfortable as possible. It should be like a second home. Add a stereo. Add a plant. If you like to have access to movies like I do while I work, you may need to add a T.V. What’s that you say? It already has a T.V.? Bonus! If you need to take breaks make sure there’s at least one comfy seat.
If you’re uncomfortable in a space, your artwork will suffer and never live up to its true potential.
What do you need?
Next on your list of criteria should be whether the space suits your material needs. If you need excessive amounts of light while you work and the space you’ve chosen only has one bare bulb on a wire then maybe you need to find somewhere else. Maybe you need natural light to work by. Does the space have any windows? What about candlelight? Picasso worked by candlelight for many of his formative years. Could you?
What about electricity? If you need to run a tablesaw but everytime you turn it on the circuit breaker is tripped, does that sound right? If a space doesn’t have the power capabilities to run your equipment then it’s useless to you. Maybe you should look for an industrial space.
Want to work on twelve foot wide canvases but your space is only ten feet wide? Hmmm. Scratch head, keep looking.
Making sure you can manage your work in the space you’ve chosen is almost as important as being comfortable in that space. If your Art has specific needs make sure the space you choose can help you meet them.
Once you’ve found a space that has all the attributes you need in order to create your Art and it’s a space that you could call home, you’ll be one step closer to your goal as a professional artist. Finding the right space will make your creativity flow. If you’re somewhere you don’t want to be you’ll be fighting your environment and eventually yourself and that never made any artist professional.
For now, that is all. Goodnight.
