Understanding Abstraction.

I woke up this morning and remembered that my phone was broken, but that I had new eye shadow.

Bitter sweet, I tell ya. Bitter sweet.

I get to register for fall term today! This is especially exciting for me because I only have two terms of Undergrad left, which means I will be going to Graduate School! I can’t believe it is almost the end.

I look back on my first day of College (I truly remember it well). I was so much younger than I am now. And so much different! When you’re this young, it’s quite incredible what a few years can do.

It’s incredible what a few years can do to one’s art (A few years and an overly priced Art Degree).

My work went from cheesy (yet attractive) drawings in pencil and marker, to fairly sophisticated abstracts, precise still lifes, and decent portraiture.

My work went from illustrations to conceptual pieces with deeper meaning.

Art School has taught me a lot about art and, surprisingly, about life. I think art is important for everyone. I believe that God created us in His image. He is a creator, thus, he created creative beings. Us.

No matter what you believe, I think it’s so obvious that we all have something in us burning to create, to feel, to emote, to be passionate and confident and contribute.

No matter your ability to draw, we are all artists. We all just express this fire differently. Some people express it with fashion, some with cooking or interior Design, some with mechanics and gardening.

Artists aren’t an elite group of people who recoil from non-artists. The people of the art world don’t think that they’re smarter than the people of “the real” world.

The stereotype of an artist is a stereotype. The stereotype of anything is a stereotype.

Art is for everybody. It’s accessible.  I think that a lot of people look at abstract or modern art and don’t understand it, but I also think that that is ok. I don’t understand Chemistry. I didn’t just spend 4 years of my life studying Chemistry, so how can I expect to?

4 years of Art Practice, Art Theory, Art, Art, Art has made me so much more compassionate for what people create: realistic or otherwise. I look at all art from a completely different view point.

I was down on myself the other day because my art has turned to simplicity. It’s conceptual.

(What the heck is conceptual simplicity?? Conceptual just means you take a concept, or an idea, and you start playing around with the idea while you create art. How you can depict your idea in the clearest way possible. For example, I am very interested in layers right now. I like the way I create layers in my studio. I am also interested in transparency, femininity and masculinity. How can I depict these ideas, my interests, in the simplest way I can? Tada: abstract art)

So, I was down on myself because I was afraid that people wouldn’t understand my work, just like I didn’t understand abstraction 4 years ago.

So, I asked a friend what good art is. A friend whose art I really really admire.

She said “good art is art that makes you feel something.”

I completely agree with her.

You love it. You hate it. You don’t understand it. You’re confused by it. You’re afraid of it. You’re angered by it. You admire it. You feel something from it.

If you look at a piece of mine and feel nothing at all, you have nothing to say at all. I haven’t done my job.

But, I keep working. I keep working in the studio because there’s nothing else that I can do. The more I learn about art and the art world, the more I have to create it.

I create art for you,

But I also create art for me too.

It’s simple. We are all creative beings. I am just a human and you are just a human too. But the good side to that? You and I are humans. And the even better side to that? You and I are simply you and I.

A name (human), a title (Sarah)… it’s all meaningless.

We are these living things that have nothing to live on but faith. We have desires and these deep, terrible internal struggles called “emotions” and we were put here on this planet without a “how-to” guide or a “why”.

I am a being who wants to make something. And I have made something. And it’s beautiful because I am beautiful, life is beautiful, and creativity is profound and beautiful.

I want to make something.

And there’s nothing difficult to understand about that.