WHAT MAKES AN ARTIST?

This is my opinion, and my opinion only.

What is an artist?

From my own experience, I think it has become very easy to call yourself an artist. If you draw, paint, or use another technique that is considered artistic today, that doesn’t automatically mean you are an artist.

But then, what is an artist?

Is it someone who makes a good living from their art? Someone who sells out exhibitions? Or is it someone who creates work, dedicates their life to it, but barely sells anything?

I see it this way: you can create work and sell everything you make, but that doesn’t necessarily make you an artist. Maybe you have simply understood what sells and decided to stick with it. To me, that doesn’t necessarily make you an artist.

If selling becomes the main focus, I have a harder time seeing you as an artist. If the thought behind the work is, “What can I make next that will sell out?” or “How can I create something that will appeal to the people I want to reach?”, then personally, I don’t consider you an artist.

I can still recognize that you have figured out how to combine creativity with business and make a living from it. But to me, that alone doesn’t make you an artist.

So again, what is an artist?

I see an artist as someone who chooses themselves and stays true to themselves. That can involve selling a lot. It can involve selling almost nothing. The difference is that sales are not what motivates the work.

An artist creates because there is something inside them that needs to be expressed. Creating comes naturally to them, almost as naturally as breathing.

But even here, I’m careful with the word “artist.”

When you first start, I wouldn’t necessarily consider you an artist yet. I would see you more as an artist in development. There is so much to learn within different techniques, and so much experimentation you have to go through before you begin to find yourself and your own voice. In a way, you are an apprentice during that process.

Then you have cases like Jean-Michel Basquiat. He was a young artist who died at only 27. Does that mean he wasn’t an artist because he didn’t have decades to develop and grow?

Of course not. I consider Basquiat an artist.

Because for me, being an artist isn’t based on age or how many years you have been creating. It is based on the person, their relationship with what they create, and that need to express something.

Maybe that is what an artist is.

Not someone who simply makes art, but someone who has a need to create it.