Art talk...
my talk for the opening of Seaview high school arts and media exhibition.
I get a bit nervous when speaking in front of a crowd, but I can manage to read ok, so even though my voice sounds shaky while my heart is racing, I read slowly and clearly enough that people can understand what I’m saying. That’s what I did with this talk I wrote to open the Seaview high school exhibition:
My talk:
“It’s a good thing I can read because I am terrible at public speaking. Opening a show with a talk is not my thing, but give me a paintbrush and some paint and I’ll happily paint a picture that says a thousand words for an audience, because I really do want to share my ideas with an audience. So, when Linda asked me to say a few words on art I was both reluctant and enthusiastic at the same time.
This is the bane of many an artist that I know.
We want to share our work, we even love to share our work…sharing our work is what drives us to make the work in the first place… …and then, at the last minute when we’re about to hit share on our socials, or drop work off at a gallery, or hang it for an audience like the students have done here with their work, we get nervous, we don’t want to show it anymore - this is the most difficult part of an art career that artists face, I think.
Putting your work, the thing that you’ve laboured over and struggled with to get it right, putting that part of yourself out out there where others can, and will, judge it whether you ask them to or not, is confronting and uncomfortable.
It’s one thing shutting yourself in a studio with great music and endless cups of tea, painting and drawing your ideas until your hearts content - and it’s another thing entirely showing it to an audience.
So to that I say Congratulations Seaview Highschool students for making it this far
Now I’d better say those few words on art -
Art has been part of the human experience since the first humans walked the earth, and is part of what makes us human. The first peoples to walk the earth discovered that by wetting different earth pigments, like clay and dirt, they could make a substance that would leave marks on surfaces that communicated to the next people that came along, and this was to become the first kinds of communicating between generations that didn’t involve speaking. A grandmother could paint a story on the inside wall of a cave dwelling that her grandchildren’s grandchildren would learn from.
That discovery led to what we understand visual art to be today. The first artists innovated a way to share knowledge, and artists today use that innovation to share ideas in their works of art.
Today we use art in many ways, from innovation to decoration, to communication. Everything we do is improved with art. Art makes the mundane extraordinary. Artists can make incredible sculptures out of rubbish found on the beach. Artists can visualise a future without plastic and lead the way to new innovations that not only make the world better, but more beautiful and interesting, environmentally friendly and kind.
Like the French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas famously said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
An artist shows others a new way to see things.
Moving forward into the unknown future where the world is already full of stuff, and pollution is wreaking havoc with the natural world, artists will be important in finding ways to recycle and reduce waste, to build beauty, to share new ideas about how to live with less, to discover new pathways forward where there seems like there’s only road blocks.
In a world that’s so full of stuff already the last thing you think it needs is more stuff like art, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Artists don’t need much to make art, what they do need is imagination and the desire to create, just give them the space and artists will come up with a solution using only what’s on hand.
The world needs art now more than ever before. We need all you young aspiring artists to step up and innovate the best way forward using your art to show the way towards a world of beauty, peace, and kindness, and to tell the stories of today in ways that bring people together to do the work that’s needed to get us there.
Again, I want to say to all those who have work hanging in this space and are here to witness it, congratulations, take a bow, the hard work is done and now you can enjoy the fruits of your labour - and congratulations to those of you who have completed the yr 12 art curriculum, it’s no easy feat to make it this far, but this is not the end - it’s actually the beginning of your journey as an artist if you choose it to be.
And now I will declare the Seaview High School Art and Media Exhibition officially open.
cheers!”
…and here is the latest entry page from my art journal.
