Amateur and Professionalism
What makes an artist a professional?
Normally a professional is someone who gets paid for their vocation. But not all artists do get paid, or get paid well enough to make their art their main profession. Many artist are not recognized or financially successful in their lifetime, but are retrospectively perceived as a professional.
Are they a professional then because they have a certain level of training or skill? This could be a factor, but again, not all artist do have formal training. Many are self taught. And some include aspects of poor craftsmanship and visibly low skill level in their work which, on the surface could appear amateur, but which is a part of conveying the concept and or aesthetic of the piece.
An amateur artist could be described as someone not pursuing a career in the arts; someone who creates as a hobby or as a recreational past time. Just for fun.
But then many professional artists gain much pleasure from making, whether they are commercially successful or not.
Amateur artists may never have any intention to exhibit their work. But in the last half a century, the rise of outsider art has seen many amateur artists being celebrated and experiencing notoriety and even commercial success.
It is clearly a complicated conversation, and one that yet again touches on this notion that art is what an artist says it is. And that the confidence they have in their process and their work can really define how people relate to it. How it is perceived. It's value.
I wanted to add here that while researching this topic, I ended up this about outsider artists more and how it is important that our approach to their work and our inclusion of them is not exploitative or insensitive. Outsider artist very often are vulnerable, experiencing mental illness for example, and so there is an inherent power imbalance.
Here are some piece by the famous outsider artist Adolf Wölfli.
Wölfli was born in 1864 in rural Switzerland, the youngest of seven children. His father left when Wölfli was around five, leaving his family in extreme poverty. His mother passed away approximately three years later. Wölfli worked a variety of farming and labor jobs until, at the age of 26, he reportedly attempted to molest a 14-year-old girl. He was later imprisoned for allegedly molesting a 17-year-old and a three-and-a-half-year-old. He was eventually placed in an asylum where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He spent the rest of his life there. Wölfli's work, however, would suggest little of his dark past. He crafts massive and obsessive labyrinths of information, ranging from numerical lists to musical compositions. He began drawing around four years after he was admitted to the Waldau Mental Asylum, and soon after became calmer in disposition and consumed by his work. The images transcend time and space, collapsing natural and unnatural forms into a flattened mass that attempts to "say everything in one word, something mystical and demonical."
I think his pieces are beautifully intricate and have a lot of qualities that you would associate with a trained artist; colour theory and compositional qualities for example.
Conversely, the successful contemporary artist John Pylychuck makes "his sculptures from the most impoverished materials: scraps of wood, remnant fabric, felt, glitter, and glue. Rendered with wonky ‘best attempt’ aesthetics, Pylypchuk mines all the sentimental authenticity of the unloved yet hopeful media of craft camps and community workshops."
(Source: Jon Pylypchuk - Saatchi Gallery)
I enjoy both artists work.
And I enjoyed thinking on this topic. It gives me confidence to make as I feel compelled to, without being steered too much by establishment. To believe in the validity and power of my own creativity.
