Quality is the thing that I worry about first and foremost, with every single piece of art that I do.

I am an unashamed perfectionist when it comes to my work. I hold myself to the highest standards of work, and while some pieces work out better than others, I know that I gave myself my best on every single one. I know some would caution me about being a perfectionist in art, but it isn’t about reaching perfect. It’s about learning, and pushing myself harder.

But I am a dedicated fanatic to quality and to not releasing work that I feel is below par. There are a million pieces that never saw the light of day because they just weren’t meant to. They became exercises instead, or got painted over, or were just never meant to be finished. Some I keep because I love a particular passage, the way things came together and made some little bit beautiful, but the rest is crap and no one else would notice that tiny bit of beauty.

So because I worry a lot about quality, I don’t mind helpful critiques. If I get that Aha! moment and can move my work forward, great. Excellent. I’m all over it. I’m separate enough from my work that I can see when changes must be made and I can usually get my ego to shut up long enough to make those changes and not be offended that I need to work on something. I’m young, I’m still learning. I will always be learning. That’s part of the path. This is a process with no destination. I will always be able to improve.

But the part where I get upset, where I find it a lot harder to not take something personally, is when it is implied (or told to me directly) that the reason I need to make said change is because I’m self taught. That if I had an MFA, I wouldn’t be making those mistakes in the first place.

Which may or may not be true. But I know a lot of crappy artists who went to art school.

And I feel as though I keep stumbling across this reminder lately, that I don’t have a diploma from some important art school, which is probably a gentle nudge from the Universe that I should pay some attention to this sore spot of mine.

This is the chink in my armour, my Achilles heel. I get really defensive about not having a fancy diploma on the wall telling everyone that I finished school and this school has given me the badge of honour – ye, child, may go out into the world and make art.

(Don’t even get me started on how much it irritates me that I feel as though I need some institution’s permission to make art.)

How this all started

I used to be a member of Wetcanvas.com and, when I first realized that yeah, university wasn’t going to be an option, I decided to ask those older and wiser than me if I could still be an artist without going to art school

Oh my god, the responses I got! Most told me that I should just go to art school (Umm…did you read my post at all?) Some said I could do it. Most said I was fucked. I decided to go for it anyways.

I think what gets me though is that I feel I’ve done the best I could with what I have. I couldn’t ever physically manage art school. I’ve got to run my schedule my way, and really listen to my own body’s needs. I do terribly running around an arbitrary schedule set by a computer.

But I’ve always worked hard when teaching myself. I spent 5 years teaching myself to draw before I ever picked up a paintbrush, and used colored pencils to teach myself basic colour theory before I ever started using acrylics. I’m not saying I’m a genius, or that I’ve mastered anything. And true, I’ve only had access to drawing from a live model in the past year, but I’ve made the most of that and am looking for more opportunities to do it. And I try to draw something from life every day, or draw myself in the mirror. And I’ve recently taken up studying anatomy so that I can learn to draw the human figure better.

Okay, so I didn’t learn to paint landscapes outside. I learned to paint landscapes from photos. Practically blasphemy, I know. But when you can’t drive and no one wants to take you to paint landscapes, you’re kinda stuck, ya know? You make the best of what you’ve got.

What I hate the most though is that I feel I have to defend myself for not going to art school – to defend my choice to be an artist and to defend my right to sell my work even if I’m self-taught. And I hate that it gets me questioning the quality of my work, and whether I even have a right to be doing what I’m doing.

I’m not even sure what the point of this post is, aside from an opportunity to stand on top of my soapbox and rant. Am I damning the school system? No. Am I saying that if you’re self taught, you’re better? No.

I guess my point is that you do the best with you what you’ve got and no one can take that away from you. You do what you gotta do to be happy.

/end rant