This is an article "Taking on the Role of a True Artist” by Marc Primo Warren
Each artist exists for a purpose. While most would readily admit that they are their own worst critic, true artists have a consciousness of the important role they play in how society develops, with perspectives angled toward beauty and truth to foster humanity and its well-being. Creative thought is always essential in providing joy, inspiration, and engagement in how most of us view significant issues throughout human history, ultimately pushing forth progress.
But just how does one take the role of a true artist? In order to master the ability to communicate your brand of visual arts effectively to your audiences, here are a few factors you have to develop first.
Nurturing universal emotion
If universal emotion is a vehicle for effective artistic communication, why then do most artists come off as eccentric and unconventional individuals? From Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” (1889) to Banksy’s “Girl With Balloon” (2002), artists have their own signature or manner of expressing their emotions and personalities that are unique yet relatable to the masses, no matter how extreme they might seem to others.
Perhaps this has something to do with being ‘woke’, as younger generations would put it. Nurturing this uber sensitivity that enables an artist to come up with epiphanies and untapped human emotions takes their work to a more profound personal level that somehow expresses a general truth worth taking note of. By tapping into past experiences and exploring the range of emotions from those experiences, artists are able to convey these strong feelings onto their work, no matter what the medium.
For most accomplished artists, being a vessel that absorbs the entire sphere of an emotion or feeling and expressing realizations through art often becomes the main purpose of their works. This, despite most truths entailing some form of burden that can affect the vessel in different ways. However, as Van Gogh had proven in the past, some burdens are worth all the sacrifice for art’s sake.
Realizing and expressing truth
Always remember that artists who try to detach themselves from reality and opt towards more pretentious and exaggerated elements tend to lose the interest of their target audiences quickly. Of course, there are the surrealists who present bended versions of realities in their works but only for the pursuit of what is true to most and never to obfuscate general thought.
True artists usually wear different masks to tap into their innermost emotions, passions, desires, fear, or even anger and express them onto the canvas, lyric sheet, or film. These palettes of emotions each undergo a process that starts with curiosity, then turns to study and discovery, and finally settles itself as truth. Take for example Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin’s “Rain in the Oak Forest” (1891), which introduced melancholia to many art lovers during his time. This only proves that artists who work with their passions and emotions unearth truth from enigma and obscurity and are able to translate it for his audience’s own review and appreciation.
Instituting tradition or change
How a true artist affects the world and society around him depends on his commitment. Does he want to preserve a treasured cultural fact or practice? Or does he aspire for change and evolution? Whether he chooses the latter over the former or is able to strike a balance between the two, these expressed emotions, goals, and ideas always stem from the most intimate depths of the artist’s thought process. He may come from a social, political or even personal perspective but the exercise of communicating an experience has more to do with the artist’s past and present standpoint that either wants to preserve or foreshadow what progress he envisions in the future.
This artistic growth and empathy then illuminates a new understanding for audiences and brought to life in art. Through time, historical art that has been carved into a society’s tradition still has the power to drive change in the present. This happens when a certain truth is preserved in art and suddenly revives its impact as society changes. Among the great works that are timeless in a society’s memory include Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” (1830); Honoré Daumier’s “The Uprising” (1848); and Diego Rivera’s “The Arsenal” (1928) among many others. If you want to find out more about Marc Primo Warren our services or just say hi, please reach out here.