Commitment to honing your skills


Art historical retention and research. Art writing. Critical thinking. They are like any other learned skill. You need to continually practice them or they start to fade. Then when you finally get the courage to put pen to paper you've got scant to say and shit similes.

Well, I'd like to start out small. I'm giving myself two weeks to write about a new artist every day. Someone up-and-coming, maybe even just finishing their MFAs. There are two reasons I'm choosing to focus on young artists. The first is that there is limited reading that one can do on an artist that maybe just graduated college. They are not in history books yet. They probably have a website and links to reviews of their senior project. I need to regain the skill of inferring, analyzing and dissecting works of art based on the visuals and available context alone. I need to remember what it's like to do original research. Maybe I'll even reach out to the artists personally. Young artists are eager for exposure, so I'm sure they'd be please to be written about anywhere. The second reason I decided to focus on the younger artists, is due to an article I read earlier today where an art advisor named Heather Flow was interviewed. She was 25 years old when she started her own art advisory. If she can do it, why can't I? Now I have no intentions of leaving my job, because I love my colleagues, our program, and the stability the gallery offers. But who's to say I can't use my free time to bone up on new artists? The artists who are my age will be the Jasper Johns and Mark Rothkos of the future. And wouldn't it be fantastic if I could become one of the respected scholars on artists of our time? And now with all of the incredible art websites like this one, and this one, and this one, I will be able to click a few links and come up with some incredible new artists to learn about!

Let's give this a shot.


Images are by French photographer Lucien Clergue. He's by no means a young artist, but these images are stirring, right?

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