Curiosity Leads The Way

From innate knowing to learned knowing

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Today’s post is the next excerpt of the book I’m currently writing about the Intuitive Voice and how it impacts us in the studio and in life. There is a preview snippet open to all subscribers, but the majority of it is hidden behind a paywall and available to those at the membership tier. If you are new to my blog, please be assured that, while I am always excited to have new paid subscribers, there is no expectation or pressure for you to join at that level. The majority of my writing here on the blog is available without membership and will remain so.

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Curiosity Leads the Way

For several years before the pandemic sent us all to the confines of our individual homes, I worked in a rented a studio in a warehouse building that housed over 60 other artist studios. Moving my practice there had been a big step for me in the first place, but one that I was excited to take for the potential to connect with like-minded creatives.

Down the hall from my new space was an enviable studio where an older man of retirement age spent most of his days creating large scale thoughtful abstracts full of form and shape. It was clear to me the artist had mastered his craft, yet the overall impact of his paintings left me feeling distanced, void of emotion, and flat. The studio grapevine informed me that he had once been an accomplished professor in the art department at a prestigious University and had an illustrious career selling and showing his work in museums and galleries in New York and across the globe.

One late afternoon, tired from a day spent unpacking and organizing my supplies, I fired up the encaustic palette to give myself a creative break. A recent series of my collage works were propped along one wall, where I could consider how I wanted to display them while I painted. Catching a glimpse of these works through the open door, my neighbor asked to come in for a closer view.

I stood at my worktable watching as he made his way down the length of the studio wall, arms folded behind him, furrowing his brow as he scrutinized my work. My nervousness in the face of his silence grew, until pausing, he tipped his head toward me and asked if I was sure I hadn’t gone to art school. Chuckling at the idea that I could forget such a thing, I assured him that I had been entirely self-taught, my process was intuitive, while bracing myself to receive his critique. His shock registered, blurting out in an unfiltered stream that he’d never seen such a grasp of composition from anyone who hadn’t been formally trained, and going on to point out all that he felt was lacking in most work of this ilk.

Unsurprisingly this is not an unusual attitude among artists, just as many professions uphold the need for a degree with little regard for lived experience and on the job training, the art world is rife with those who believe that an MFA is the only pathway forward for a career in the arts. I am no newbie to the shock my studio neighbor expressed for my aptitude that day. I came by my former career as a Project Manager in the printing industry in much the same way. As the only person in the office sans college education, I’d worked my way to the position from the hand-bindery and shipping department through a steady stream of promotions, eventually earning the label of Senior PM with the added responsibilities of organizing and facilitating meetings full of department heads, writing the manual of procedures for the company’s ISO certification, and handling an intense workload of top clients with little in the way of direct training; encountering the same shocked expression whenever a colleague inquired about my background that my studio neighbor conveyed that day.

To say I’ve dealt with my fair share of Imposter Syndrome by forging my path through these systems in nontraditional ways, when the expectation of broader society is set on institutional learning would be an understatement. I didn’t start off with a plan to bypass that system, I was simply determined to pull myself out of the life set up by the adverse circumstances of my past, one intuitive next step at a time.

This is in no way meant to denigrate academia. Had I been awarded the opportunity for the college experience I surely would have taken it. It is meant to call attention to the way we divide ourselves and elevate one group over another using criteria set for us that isn’t obtainable for many.