The Art of Experience

As I have reviewed the portfolios of hundreds of artists and photographers to find talented artists whose work strikes a chord, it has occurred to me that in most cases "talent" evolves with years of experience.

I noticed that most of the artists we have selected to be part of 1ArtCollection.com have many years or decades of experience creating art. Many also had formal art education prior to their careers as artists.

We do have some young artists in our collections whose work is amazing - reflecting the hard work they've put in to get to where they are. But, for most young artists, it's not that they don't have talent, it's just that it can, and usually does, take many years of trial and error, and hard work to develop the "skills" to fully master their medium.  

I also noticed that many artists are just lazy or simply lack the discipline necessary to develop the skills needed to create memorable art. The excuse is usually something like, "I don't like tightly rendered artwork" - to which the response is, "until you have mastered the ability to render precisely, you're not really making a choice – it's because you can't" do it. 

I was guilty of that very cop-out as an art major in college many years ago. Although I had a wonderful sense of color, composition, and design, I didn't draw well (and still don't). I lacked the discipline and passion required to nurture my drawing and rendering skills to a level of excellence. Being stoned a lot probably didn't help.

So, I took the lazy route. I became a photographer.

I often muse about a time, several years into my photography career, when people used to tell me "You are so talented". And then one day I came across some photographs I had taken in my first photography class in college. They were terrible. I sucked.

The point is that it took several years of training and experience to develop my innate artistic sensibilities into skills that finally looked like "talent". 

On the flip side, I remember another professional photographer who was a competitor. He had a studio doing portraits and weddings. And after 25 years, his work was still awful. He simply did not have an artistic bone in his body. Fortunately for him, his business survived because portrait photography (not all) relies in large part on a "formula" which has been known since the renaissance. That was the exact reason why I moved on into much more creative commercial photography and ultimately photographic art - the artist in me was bored.

My conclusion is that, creating stunning artworks requires not only innate artistic talents, but also the skills acquired through years of experience.

As one of our 30-year-veteran artists at 1ArtCollection.com sagely observed recently, "Quality takes time". There is no substitute for experience - in art and in life.