Art College Taught Me

Warning* This might taste a little bitter.

Art College taught me:

• It’s not worth bending myself to meet a supposed set of requirements because it’s too destructive against my soul to experience the false pruning performed by humanity’s arbitrary demands that command me to execute surgery against my soul so that I resemble something dead, unchanging, and “predictable.” And so, I have decided that society never has the right to demand a person die for their ideas of how they wanted events to go in the personality of another person. Which means that I am not going to do “research” to cater to an audience; I am going to create what I want and how I want, and I will use the grammar that I like and that I choose (they continue to change the rules, if you haven’t noticed) without consulting anyone.
• No one knows me or my desires or my future well enough to advise me, in life’s choices. My only help has been God.
• People will value their own needs over the needs of others, without much thought.
• I will never put my life in the hands of another person, ever again.
• I will never be told “No” or “Error” within a creative piece of work because…
• Finished is “professional”
• I will not perform “edits” on anything I create. So, before I begin, I had better be sure that I have enough information needed to complete the project at the necessary level of completeness. And if they don’t like the “style” they can try again with a different person.  
• There are times for learning and there are times for practicing what I’ve learned.
• There are seasons for not asking permission, which are healthy.
• Next time I’m ready to learn, I’m going to seek out the specific knowledge about the tool without allowing anyone to inform me what I will do with the knowledge of how the tool functions.

Do you want to go to art college?

Those who thrive in Art College art NOT CREATIVE people!!!!!!!!

The students who are there to learn to MIMIC creative people, are those who do well in Art College.

If you already have a creative drive, DON’T GO TO ART SCHOOL, PLEASE!!!!

It will take three to five years to recover, and that is if you FIGHT against the new-anxiety disorder you’ve been taught to enforce upon your own mind; the sound of someone relentlessly, week after week, day after day, for every brush stroke accuse you that you’re wrong, that every color is wrong, that every line is wrong, and you better give up on your own mind coming up with any worthy ideas, because someone other than you has the “right” idea for what you “should” produce so that High Art and Big Collectors will judge you brilliant and pay big bucks; Art professors do not stop annihilating personal creativity until they are consulted for every single 6 millimeters of your performance and the relentless demands of permissions are intended to prevent the creative-flow of a personality until students give up “broken like a horse” to stop creating on their own and give all their desires for the creative reasoning, all that ever became a motivation for an individual to create, over to the professor so that the student take a prescription written by Jesus of Nazareth to “die the flesh” so that the person will forsake all personal desires and submit their hands as tools for “high art” gallery owners to execute commands as responses to what art is selling above 100K. So, first, the professors deny God’s work in a human soul, then get themselves standing where only God should stand, as the vinedresser of the soul, so that the professor prunes the soul as he or she wants, after an inappropriate time of destruction until the students submits under the relentlessness of shaming individual worth to give up the self, not in exchange for the Holy Spirit, but in exchange of the opinions of a human professor educated on the wished of those pay big bucks. They then demand the student allow the professor to be treated as one would treat God. And they will do it thinking they have led a student to the correct spiritual prescription of the purpose for “dying to fleshly desires.” So that the student has simultaneously satisfied this Godly command. Not true.

If you are CREATIVE and you don’t intend to undergo a long form of SUICIDE, I beg you to avoid Art College at all costs.

Consult alumni by asking the graduates, “How much art did make before entering school? How much art are you creating now that you’ve graduated? What did you learn in college?”

Students who are not creative feel comforted by a professor who tells them, “no,” a lot because they feel this as boundaries. These students want to be told what to do so that they know when they got “right” answers. Without any creativity in the nature of the mind as a need for the health of the soul, operating as a form of processing or a natural response to the happenstance of being made alive, the cold academia of “right” and “wrong” feels accomplishable. Conversely, academia’s impositions feel horrific to the creative mind.

My actual advice is this:

Read The Creative Impulse first chapter of the book Foundations of Art and Design by Lois Fichner-Rathus. Follow the link the read the chapter on Google Books. It really is an excellent book.

If this description of what it is to be an artist resonates with you, making you think, “Why are they telling me what it is like to be an artist? I already am one.” You are NOT the kind of mind, which academia with aid. I would recommend seeking art courses online for the specific the style you want to learn. And take your education in the view of your entire life; learn when you want, what you want, and practice what the skills you have, intending to make personal choices about what you want to do with the knowledge gained.

If you read the chapter and think, “I have no idea what this means. It sounds like garbledy-gook.” You are probably going to learn what you need by going to art college. Still, I encourage you, to think about the style you’d like to emulate and seek out a professor that will teach you to paint like him or her. If the professor says he’s going to teach you how to be creative, be cautious. I think it’s always better to go with someone who will just give a set of skills, other than “creativity.” But that’s my opinion. And it comes a place of doubt that learning “creative” is separate from starting with one skill at length, spending one or two years on one style, practicing within that skill for two to three years, adding styles slowly over a lifetime. I would ask that professor, “How many styles of painting you will be exposed to in a semester? When do I get to start creating, independently?” And then, ask senior students who are in the program, “What are critiques like?” Let the student answer in detail. Then also ask the students, “Do you feel like you can do right by this professor?” If the first sound out of this student is laughter, that’s a bad sign. If the answer is, “No” or if they are checking the room to see if anyone can hear while they are telling you about other things that, probably, compensate for never satisfying the demands of the professor, deflecting answering the question by starting the sentence with, “Well, I’ve learned…” that’s also a bad sign.

If the professor intends to teach students how to be creative, the professor needs to have clearly described parameters for what constitutes a success for each painting, every time. Otherwise, the professor is failing you and should have left the creativity side of the assignment totally up to the student by not giving instructions as to how to implement whatever Elements and Principles of art are the focus for the painting. So that the professor says, “Show me pattern,” and walks away. And the success is pattern somewhere it is in the painting. An example of a failing professor is one who says, “Show me pattern,” and walks away, but at critique gives failing grades for not painting a quilt pattern across the totally of the canvas, failing those who chose to place a pattern in only a section of the piece, without having specified the amount of pattern, as being the only Principle of Art evident in the totality of the painting.

What will it be like?

Firstly, a Foundations art course does not involve much showing or modeling of the method.

In my experience in two different college programs, the students in my courses got to watch the professor perform the action, one time. Then, the students were given one to two weeks to recreate that method without aid from the professor and without being encouraged to asked questions. Most questions were responded to with the threat, “If you can’t accomplish this, quit the program.” If you get this response to your question, quit the program, as early as possible, even if you’re out $20,000 because it will hurt less. Do not expect that a different professor at the college will treat you better. Often, professors are vetted to adhere to a specific method of teaching. Seek out upper classmen in the program and ask them, “How do the art professors respond to your questions? How confident are you going into a critique, that you’ve done what the professor has asked?”

You can get the experience without college

If you are naturally creative and you’d like some more idea of what art college might be like for you, read this bad advice to get the taste on your tongue for bitterness and pain:

You can get emotional damage for free by creating a local Meet Up Group that paints new paintings every two weeks, painted to completion (pull all-nighters if you have to, but it must be completed to satisfaction so that you can justify every square inch of that painting as within your intentions.)

Then have the group critique each other’s work seeking to ask every person, “Did you finish the work to satisfaction? What do you like? What do you wish you could have been better? What will you repeat in another painting? What will you avoid doing, if you can?” And tell each artist how you emotionally respond to the piece. And tell each artist how your eye moves around the painting, answering the questions “What do you see first? Does your eye get stuck circling in an area? Is there anything that looks confusing and makes you think, ‘what is that?’” Look at the contrast and balance and textures (Google “Elements and Principles of Art”.)

Note* College didn’t teach me the language of the critique – God is my teacher – I showed up with that skill. I got threatened to be removed from the program for preforming critiques with other students outside of the control of the professors, because I didn’t know “the direction the professor was going with student.” I don’t care if Art Schools get shut down; Art College needs a warning before accepting students NOT FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE – CREATIVES, JUST PRACTICE WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW, FASTER.

After you have built trust between your peers in your Meet Up Group, having learned and grown from your critiques, set a timer on an Alexa to begin interrupting the critiques by saying “No, you did it wrong.” And, then when you feel like you’re ready to start a painting that you’re particularly excited about, or maybe you don’t know where you’re going to go with it, set an alarm on your Alexa to go off during your creating every 15 mins saying, “Wrong! Are you kidding? You think you’re capable of this? You should have consulted me, no one is going to be interested in this. Really, you thought that was a good idea? That’s shlaughp, oh my god. I’m already embarrassed for you. You should have asked someone for permission so that you could have avoided this inevitable humiliation. Uhg, if only I could cover my eyes.”

Make sure you keep your Alexa alarms on repeat during the critiques and while you’re painting.

Make sure you continue this for a minimum of 4 to 6 years.

Note* While I fully expect that this will accurately give you all the education you will gain from Art College, so long as you have a Meet Up Group of active participants, you will gain the mental disorder as well, which kills self-love and confidence and hope and joy, while alienating a create mind from the most important tool that a person with a creative mind utilizes to PROCESS life events, trauma, fear, sadness, disappointment, as well as happiness, joy, celebration, life-successes, expectancies, and all things beautiful – painting.

Can see how the students would have to band together or die? I have plenty of conspiracy theories for how this method of instruction got into the American Curriculum, but the Bible says, “Don’t call conspiracy, what the world calls conspiracy,” and I believe that is a warning to not look into Pandora’s Box too long, lest one would lose hope, but instead to look at Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross and remember that everything was atoned for and so God can do anything he wants, and if he loves the planet, like he says he does, then there’s always hope.

I want creative people accurately warned and grided for battle for protecting your mind by choosing not to go to a college that will harm you instead of help, feeling complete a part of the Academics because God made you and all his works are Marvelous.

You are already complete.

You get to learn what you want.

I don’t not want people who are creative to go into this curriculum thinking your mind is strong enough to learn what you can and survive on the strength of your confidence, I thought that because I have a gift of confidence; I got destroyed. The relentlessness is like any form of torture, and the confidence will not endure.

God is a better teacher.

Tell him what you want to learn and when he asks you, “Why?” answer him honestly, he’s not testing you, he enjoys your conversation and thinks every thought in your mind is precious.

So, how does a creative recover?

We must turn our backs from looking at the shadow that’s threatening to cut our soul, one more time, and turn to the truth so that all our fears fall beneath our feet: God loves us.

“perfect love casts out fear,”

1 John 4:18

“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgement; because as He is, so also are we in this world [Not of this world-John 17:16.] There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him [Jesus,] that the one who loves God should love his brother also.”

1 John 4:16-21

God’s love is beyond what I can accomplish; He looks at the world with love. And yet, I look at it with fear and anger and judgement. But I like God. And I want to feel better, so I lean close to God. And I learn to trust his Spirit that breathes peace into me like a blazing fire in winter, warming my heart. And I keep it near me, a long time, before I look at my pain or the world. Before I feel disappointed by what art college gave that I didn’t want and stole, which I didn’t want to give away while bleeding my finances and my hope from my veins, I sit in God’s love, and I eat his word for my provision until safety takes the place of worry and love replaces fear.

Once I know that God will never leave me or forsake me, then I forgive because I am healed. He always reminds me, I have all the time I need because he doesn’t know how to rush. He’s always on time and never early, neither should he ask me to perform differently from his nature or capability, in being sovereign over all things, to command me to be early. I let God forgive the fools that failed me and are failing others, because he is ruler of the government and he’s making everything better, all the time.

Because I have lost nothing before God, I can give up my pain and fear that I could disappoint Him so much that he’d chuck me away.

How can I trust him? His Holy Spirit whispers that he’s not like the world and that means he doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t abuse salvation, but he gives, differently. And his Holy Spirit is very comforting and because of the comfort, I hope. And then I step out on faith that he’s loving me every minute, and I can receive his peace, which flows to me like a gentle stream of water for me to accept into my heart, my soul, my being, in the depths of me where my creativity grows and where is housed my self-worth in the worth of my soul, where there is intimacy with myself, but grumbles with hunger for the love, intimate and true, from God for the soul he made, that is all of me.

And I let his love for me replace the recordings of the enemies of my soul.