Craftmanship and Art

The spawning salmon painting is an example from a student's work at the November 4, Fall Creek Art Festival  Watercolor Class at the Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center. The primary focus is the salmon with four secondary subjects.

Some say class work is probably instructor influenced and cannot be considered as original art. However, I believe this student came late and had her own ideas. I like her painting so much, I wish it were my own. She has a main focus but many secondary objects. My idea was to limit the number of secondary things within the painting. So this is an exception to what I was teaching. I am humbled. 

While anyone can learn to make an artistic, creative painting with a few basic technical skills, a general belief is that not everyone who paints pictures are artists. Not all well made paintings are art.  Certainly there should be some word to recognize extraordinary commitment and continued practice and deep involvement in using materials or ideas creatively to express their own original story. Everyone has their own individual story, some are more committed to self-expression.  There must be, also, a word for the people whose art has informed all aspects of their decisions of how they live.

Art can also be made without technical craft like when Picasso made a Bull's head from handelbars and a seat of a bicycle.  Two unrelated things put together in new context is creative art.

from page 10 of H. W. Janson, History of Art,