We are artists and that means we are weird. When you say “I’m an artist”, some stereotypes come up in most people’s minds. They think that you:
- either perfectionist or lazy
- live in a dream world and permanently poor
- very emotional and hence very sensitive to opinions
- always carry a sketchbook and make drawings or note there
- know a lot of artists around and hang out with them
- very messy and don’t care about things organization
However, what is weird to others is normal to artists and vice versa. I prepared a few Weird Artists cards illustrating the situations most artist experience all the time. In fact, artists mostly feel under appreciated and not understood. That’s not about how good this or that artist is; instead, the main problem is that most people think that art is simple, and what they see and understand is right, and if they don’t like it, that means the artwork is bad.
The world of art is much deeper than most people think and includes many layers of understanding. You may not like this or that work, but they can be valuable as representations of art. For example, most famous artists faced misunderstanding during their lives and the most revolutionary art grew from the rejected artists. Marcel Duchamp used to say that he didn’t care what people were saying about his art now, he mostly cared what art critiques would say about him 100 years later. And he was right.
Meet my main charters:
- SD – an artist
- VJ – a master of science
- PJ – an accountant
- MJ – an IT programmer
- Artist’s angry truth-teller
If you don’t get the jokes of the cards, show them to your artist friends, and they will explain.