You are putting yourself forward to teach people how to develop their creativity. Aren’t you a professional artist?
Or are you a professional teacher of art? a therapist or just a blogger?
What experience do you have to teach creativity? Because when I read your first email this morning I couldn’t stop laughing.
A professional artist makes a living from their art. Does that make sense to you? They have the history to teach creativity.
Can you hear my heart breaking into a million pieces for the kind, creative mama on the receiving end of these tweets? She handled it like a pro, offering to connect via email, to provide a refund…but the woman kept going, asking to see her body of work, asking how long she’d been a “professional” artist, implying she was taking people’s money and providing no value in return.
I think I’ve been teaching art long enough that I can determine skilled and unskilled use of materials & techniques, repetitive work, lack of originality, lack of any meaning or depth to a work. I determine crap using those guidelines, not whether I like it or not.
Well, here’s what I think. This kind of creative prejudice – the thought that there is a “right” way to create and express ourselves – is so dangerous. Words like these are weapons in disguise; heat-seeking missiles capable of crushing spirits and dashing dreams. Artists should not have to go out into the world – especially within their own community – wearing heavy armor.
No one on Planet Earth has the right to decide and declare whether you’re a real, professional artist. No one has the right to put parameters around creativity, claiming that only someone with a certain type of expertise can inspire greatness and ignite the imagination. No one has permission to bully you into submission, to steal your confidence, to critique the very essence of who you are and what you love to do. Oh! And no one knows better than you how flippin’ awesome you are.
{Share the Love!}