Developing your own voice as an artist.
There are different stages most artists go through. This is the one I am at right now and it’s pretty challenging. I won’t say the most challenging, but still it’s pretty difficult.
The reason it’s difficult isn’t so much that as an artist you are untalented or unoriginal, it’s the fact that you know you have something unique to offer, but you haven’t quite developed it yet.
Everything we try and do leads somewhere unique. We are inspired, and take different things into our ultimate product. In this we find our voice.
I’ve been looking at the art of Willie Cole lately. Willie takes everyday objects and transforms them into sculpture and works based off of those objects attributes. I don’t know what inspired him to take an everyday household iron and elaborate in such a way as he has done, but it’s obvious that there is a voice at work in Cole’s work.
Willie Cole (American, born 1955) will have his first New York exhibition since 1994. Cole will exhibit recent sculptures which continue several of his intersets and themes. Some of these works are based on the form of an iron — an image which he began investigating in 1989. Cole was first attracted to the iron for both its form and for its perceived embodiment of the spirit of the person who used the iron. The earliest versions, which he referred to as Household Gods and Domestic Demons, dealt with these ideas by utilizing found objects. More recently, Cole has been constructing enlarged versions (i.e. an iron 600 times actual size) made from diverse materials both found (banisters, pullies) and constructed or carved (two egg ‘beaters’ that resemble African sculpture and which were carved out of two large sections of porch post)
After viewing Cole’s work, it’s hard to look at a household iron the same way again.
Sometimes as an artist, you may already have a voice, but you are having trouble recognizing it for yourself too.
To find and recognize your own unique voice, lets ask these two questions.
What would you have your legacy be?
How will your art reflect that from here on out?
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POSTED IN: Brain Shavings
4 opinions for Developing your own voice as an artist.
Mary Emma Allen
Oct 28, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Some thought provoking questions, William…and good ones for the artist and craftsperson to consider.
Goji Juice Girl Grace!
Nov 1, 2007 at 10:16 pm
I know exactly what you mean, William. - “Developing your own voice as an artist.” I am 20, I myself have been doing digital art for about 7 years now. You can see my gallery at:
http://aquae.deviantart.com
It’s taken me a long while, but I slowly feel like I’m slipping into my niche. - Realistic fantasy art. It was a very hard switch for me to make, because for the longest my art was very cartoony. I had always wanted to paint more realistic pieces, but avoided it because whenever I tried, it was so different, I’d end up terribly upset and disappointed in the results.
When I was about 19 though I finally dove into it, deciding I’d continue on my pursuit of learning realism no matter how “poor” my initial results were. I still have much to learn but I’m very proud of myself and feel I have grown tons as an artist!
marcel willaert
Nov 2, 2007 at 6:02 pm
howdy
thanks I needed to read that, lol, yes I guess one of the hardest things I have done is finding my voice as an artist, but in the last few years, I have begun to sing my own song and toot my own horn, where my creativity comes from etc.
thanks
Steph aka Yellow
Jan 14, 2008 at 11:14 am
I have no idea what my voice is. All I know is that I have to keep talking, shouting, singing, and grunting in a creative sense, or else I feel like I’d explode.
What would I have my legacy be - I want my work to be the epitimy of something - for example you can’t look at Lancashire mills without seeing them through Lowry’s eyes, and you can’t look at sunflower without your seeing it though Van Gogh’s eyes. They are narrow examples, but I want people in the future to see a certain certain something and have my vision overlaid onto it.
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