Always Wanted to Be an Artist? Just Do It, Says Creativity Guru
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In your head, you can still hear the discouraging voice of that second grade art teacher who gave you a C-minus on your crayon portrait of your family's dog because his eyes were both on the same side of his head? That early discouragement may be the reason that you haven't drawn or painted or sculpted anything ever since--even after you went to a museum and were startled to discover that Picasso took similar anatomical liberties, such as this 1941 portrait "Tête de femme, Dora Maar."
But now that you're in midlife, it's about time that you disregarded your old schoolmarm's opinion. Instead, you should listen to someone who knows a bit more about art. Dean Nimmer is a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, where he was chairman of the Department of Drawing, Painting and Printmaking, and a winner of the 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award. He says that you still can be an artist, if you're willing to try.
"One of my colleagues likes to tell about how he once went to a friend's house for a dinner party, and the family's 4-year-old daughter answered the door," says Nimmer. "She said to him, 'What do you do?' He said, 'I'm a professor at the art college. I teach students how to draw and paint.' And the little girl was puzzled. 'Why?' she asked. 'Did they forget how?' The point, though, is that she was right. Everyone knows how to be an artist. You just have to get over your inhibitions, and be one."
Though he's technically retired, Nimmer has embarked upon a new mission--helping people unlock and express their creative urges. He's the author of a 2008 book, "Art Through Intuition: Overcoming Your Fears and Obstacles to Making Art," now in its third printing.The DIY art manual includes more than 60 exercises would-be artists can use to rekindle the pleasure of creation."I have exercises that return to the simplest techniques--things like finger painting, which allows you to experiment with color--to more sophisticated projects, such as self portraits or working with unusual materials." (In his blog, Nimmer describes sample exercises, such as action painting with sticks or dishwashing sponges and shadow drawing.)
Nimmer is a noted abstract expressionist painter (as you can see from this online gallery of his paintings). But he thinks that we tend to take artistic credentials and critical approval way too seriously. "I'm thinking of the person who says, `I really used to love to draw and paint, but my teacher didn't like my pictures, and if I started again now, my husband or my kids wouldn't think it was any good.' There's this whole sort of self-intimidation process that starts, because a person thinks that the finished product isn't art with a capital 'A,' unless it meets somebody's approval. That's totally convoluted. To an artist, the goal of art isn't the finished work, but what you discover from the process of making it. That's been so lost in our culture, and we need to get it back."
Over the years, Nimmer has taught painting and drawing to students of all types, including a pair of detectives from the local police force in Holyoke, MA. "They were studying criminal justice, and they signed up for my community college class because they needed to take a humanities course," he recalls. "They came up to me after the first class. One detective says, 'My partner here, all he knows how to do is bust down doors. And I'm not much more artistic.' They were hoping I'd let them slide through. But instead, I said, 'No, I'm going to show you that you can draw. It's just a matter of learning a few basic things.' So we did some exercises, like looking at an apple and then trying to draw it from memory, because once you learn to really see something, you can draw it. By the end of the class, the guy who was supposed to be just a door-breaker did a self-portrait that he liked so much that he took it home to give to his father. He wanted to tell him, 'Dad, I actually made this.' That's the kind of reward that makes teaching art really satisfying to me."
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