I'm Having a Breakdown - Sage, Advice Please

[Kimber Scott]

Thanks, John. I turned the painting in today. We did a small critique. She made many helpful suggestions and I'm feeling much better about the painting and the "class," altogether. She addressed all of the issues I was worried about.

I'm glad this board was here for me. I tend to get a bit over-dramatic, but that's what's going on inside my head. Every painting problem becomes Titanic. Life is so perilous. The world will stop turning any moment if I can't paint this cheek, or that hand. And why can't I paint it? Then to add to the torture I begin looking at Bouguereau and wonder why I can't paint like that. It's got to be because nobody will teach me!

And, there it goes and here it is. The painting has been turned in, talked about and brought home and the world is still spinning. Of course, I will keep painting. I couldn't live without it!

[Chris Saper]

Dear Kimber,

You live so close, please come visit me ( 602-957-8107). I think you are at cross purposes. You need the grade to graduate and open up whatever options academically you might want to pursue.

Matriculation is something that I think is essential, and that is important. That being said your university (Where?) experience is independent from your art experience. First things first:

Graduate with honors. This is a degree, not a post graduate experience. Real portrait education will occur for you outside the university setting. Both, though, are important.

She stresses quantity over quality. She says I can learn more in 100 paintings than I can in one.

Actually I agree here.

And only Bougeureau can paint like Bougeureau. You will paint like yourself.

[John Crowther]

Chris is so right, Kimber, you will learn more in 100 paintings. Remember, we get good at what we do. It's hard to see progress from one day to another, or one painting to another, and without the stimulation of progress it's easy to lose heart. But a year later, after 100 paintings, or whatever, you'll be astonished at how much you've grown without even realizing it, even when you don't have the benefit of a teacher.

John C.

[Kimber Scott]

Thanks, Chris. I do tend to get ahead of myself, don't I? I'd love to come visit with you. I'll call you soon.

I'm a student at ASU. I graduate next spring. Hopefully, I can keep my wits about me until then! There are some great teachers there and they treat me very well. They just don't know what I want to know, (if they do, they won't tell me), and it causes a bit of a disconnect at times. I get frustrated and decide I'm going to have to find the answers myself, but my time is taken up with their agenda! I have to remember, I am paying them for their agenda. That's what school is all about. (duh) I can either go along, or not. I've gone along so long now, as big an internal struggle as it's been, I might as well keep it up until the end. What's it going to hurt? I'll get a degree.

I know I must sound like a loonie tune. I get wound up pretty tight, sometimes. I'm like the girl who turns into a blueberry in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." I want everything, NOW! I'll get over it. Luckily, I haven't floated away... yet.

John, I like what you said, "We get good at what we do." Thanks!

[Chris Saper]

When will you complete your degree/

[Tom Edgerton]

Kimber--

What are your post-graduate goals? Do you need this degree to do what you want to do after school?

[Kimber Scott]

Chris - Thanks so much for talking with me last night. You are a kind soul.

Tom - My goal when I graduate is to paint. I had at one time entertained the thought of being a teacher, perhaps at the community college, or university level. I've put that on the back burner as it seems simply a diversion and I can't imagine the thought of grad school at this point! Teaching was not my goal when I signed up. I was hoping to learn to paint. Instead, I've been prodded into broadening my horizons. Good, if I were 18, didn't have four kids, two grandkids, strong political opinions, hadn't of spent nine years in the Army, worked in nursing homes and jails, thought a lot about life and death and actually lived through it, weighed religion or no, or if I cared to paint about world hunger and American's tendency to eat junk food. I really don't care. I care about light and color and composition and I want to know how to lay on paint in a way that stirs the soul, not simply shocks it. So, right now, I feel I'm locked in a rubber room. The answers to all my desires are just outside the door and the only importance the degree holds for me is the fact I've put a lot of work into getting it. I graduate next year.

I will say this, the torture ebbs and flows. I have met a lot of really nice people at school. I enjoy the studio time with my friends and the practice of drawing and painting is always a good thing. Like a teacher I had back in the community college (who actually taught me something) used to say, "You can always learn more, you can never learn less!" I really enjoy my art history and literature classes. I know I will not regret having done this. My frustration comes mainly from my own ineptitude. One day, I will know what I want to know and then... I will want to know more!

[Tom Edgerton]

Kimber--

I think the problem is that you have conflicting goals. For whatever reason, you feel you need to graduate from a program with a state university degree. That's fine, but it probably will not ever provide you with the type of art experience and daily teaching that you want to further your artistic goals. So you have to decide which--the degree or the learning--you want to make your priority.

I don't mean to sound sanctimonious. I know that life is a series of very complicated choices. But my perspective on my own path, which mirrors yours, is this: I wish I had known what I needed when I was twenty.

I went through a state university art program from '70-'74, and it wasn't worth a nickel. I received next to no valuable teaching input or worthwhile art instruction of any kind, except for one life drawing class. If I had known at the time that what I was searching for was indeed available--but in the context of private ateliers, specialized art schools with a realist tradition such as the Art Students League or PAFA, and other such art-only programs--I would have gone for that. But I was a small-town Southern kid with no one around to point the way for me, and no knowledge of traditional art instruction and where to find it.

From my perspective now, I've come to a few conclusions:

1) To do what you describe, it is not necessary to have a university art degree. In a lot of related commercial art and graphic design fields, it isn't necessary either. I've been on the hiring end of things several times, and in such situations, I relied entirely on a person's job history and book, and never once asked or looked to see where they went to school. The work speaks for itself.

2) If you want to teach, you can teach. You don't need a university degree to do it, unless you want to teach in a public situation. But why would you? Your students will be taking art for a lot of reasons beside any real interest in it (as required electives, etc.) and you'll be trying to teach to a captive audience. I've done it, and being a crusader for better art instruction in public schools will eventually grind you down to a nub. Privately, I have a waiting list for students who really want to know what I know, and no one has ever asked me where I went to school in this case either. No art teacher I know of in town who teaches privately gets asked this; they attract students locally through word of mouth and reputation. Teaching privately is very gratifying.

If for some reason it's important for you to have a university degree--that it will satisfy something inside you that wants it--I completely understand and commend you for going for it. It takes a lot of grit. I don't minimize the time you've spent already toward that aim, God knows. But you are spending a ton of time and money to do so. If the low quality of what you are being exposed to is driving you bonkers and/or not meeting your needs, your time and money might be better spent in a situation that more closely reinforces your artistic goals, whether it results in some kind of "credential" or not.

I've lived through a number of artistic incarnations, both commercial and personal, and one conclusion I've come to here in middle age is that it really does matter how you spend every hour of your day, and life is too short to spend it in a way you can't stand.

With highest regards and admiration--TE