11 Lessons from an Art student that are 100% Applicable in Your Life
Contrary to popular belief, Art lessons taught me many lifelong skills
I chuckle as I watch people furrow their eyebrows in inquisitive skepticism at what I’d just told them.
“You’re did IB Art? So… what do you even learn during lessons?”
“What, you can’t draw or paint?! How the hell did you top your class then?!”
Chances are, if you’ve never taken Art as a subject, you’d be peering through the same half-empty glasses that sits perched on my conversation partner’s nose.
You probably view Art as a useless subject that leads to a grey future of despondency and perpetual struggle.
You probably imagine that all the colour and brushstrokes we dabble with as Art students will fade to trickling streaks of grey and black when we enter “the real world”.
You probably never took Art yourself.
I completely understand where you’re coming from, because I’ve had that opinion flung at me countless times by people like you.
And I beg to differ.
Art has taught me more about life than any other subject I’ve taken during the two years of my IB journey.
Regardless of what you define as Art: Music, visual arts, studio art, creative writing, fashion design, interior design, and so on, all these types of Art are branches that extend from the same tree trunk which roots are planted firmly in the foundation of life.
Amidst the quiet rustle of paintbrushes gliding across acid-free paper and the crinkle of crimson cellophane in the studio, these realisations about Art gradually dawned on me during my two years as a high school Art student.
Always be curious
Two long years as an Art student was a consistent push beyond the peripheries of my mental comfort zone, and taught me to always be curious. As the months progressed, you could hear my mind murmuring with hunger; a hunger for new knowledge and influences, perpetually craving the desire to learn more, know more and experiment more. Upon graduation, I’ve come to realise that that spirit of discovery is still woven in the fabric of my being.
Experiment the hell out of everything
In Art, you never get it right the first time. You never present your first conception as your final piece to be showcased in an exhibition. As an artist, you’re always forced to push beyond what you thought you could create. You experiment, and you fail. This iterative process often results in the best Art, and acts as a wonderful habit that we should inculcate into our lives in order to live to our fullest.
Master the first principles of the subject
When I first started out as an Art student in January 2016, I knew nothing about Art. In fact, I was the only student in my entire Art class without any prior Art experience! Two thirds of my class had been doing Art for over five years, with some honing their skills since childhood.
Right from the beginning, I had a huge disadvantage in comparison with my peers. Yet, I didn’t see this steep learning curve as a slippery obstacle. I saw it as an opportunity to be scaled. From the beginning, I sought the first principles of Art. What was Art about? What made good Art? What do Art experts see in Art that us laymen fail to realise? With these questions acting as guiding stars, I took my first step on the road of my long artistic journey.
In life, as with my experience in Art, we are all bound to be clueless about something when we first begin. In order to enhance our knowledge, getting a grasp of the first principles of the subject matter is a crucial stepping stone towards its mastery.
Failure is inevitable
At some point along your life, you are bound to fail. I remember the claws of shame tearing at my soul after I spent over four hours casting a model in plasters of Paris, only to have all these hours wasted because I cast all the plasters together without leaving any gaps between panels, resulting in my inability to remove them when the casting process was completed.
You’re never gonna get it right the first time. Be it in your career, romantic relationships or personal endeavours. Looking back at how the second and third casts turned out so much better and recognising how much affirmation you received from others during its exhibition, I’ve realised one thing:
All the failures suffered along the way was sure as hell worth it.
What you imagine in your head will always turn out differently from what manifests in real life
Embrace your reality anyway.
If it isn’t going well, it isn’t finished.
I remember that day when I drowned in a sea of despondency and dejection. It was a humid afternoon in March last year. I had been working on a static fashion installation for six months, and nothing seemed to be working out.
‘I’m finished!’ I remember letting out a sigh, the kind of sigh that escapes your body as the walls of your lungs are crumbling in.
I thought that my project was destined for the bin. Having been working at the same experiment for six months, it wasn’t hard to see why. Textures weren’t blending together, fabric was tearing and the color palette had been reduced from a sophisticated artful concoction to visual vomit.
Little did I know that I had barely begun.
This failure was but a mere porthole along a journey that would last for another six months, a period of time in which I would steer my creative direction in a different trajectory and redesign my installation from the ground up, literally.
As strange as it sounds, switching my creative direction suddenly reduced what had seemed like an insurmountable obstacle into a mere bump.
Eventually, mere days before the project was due, I was done.
Along this journey of Art, as with life, we will all be bound to feel down at some point. We will feel like giving up. Continue walking anyway.
You will know when you actually love what you’re doing.
If you’ve done any type of Art before, you would know that Art, with all its complexities and failed experiments and annoyances, is strangely therapeutic.
You might have basked in that feeling of zen washing over you as your paintbrush glides across the woven white canvas.
You might have had your fingers soak in the soft tresses of toile as you drape the cloth around your mannequin, while you construct your next collection.
You just felt one with the medium.
Five months before my final exhibition, I was working alone in the studio. I was smoothing out the layers of glue on a paper mache sculpture when the subtle yet reassuring ebb of passion came seeping into my being, running along the walls of my veins and nourishing my soul. It was a beautiful feeling. Contrary to what the world had told me about passion, it didn’t arrive at the height of my exhilaration of completing a piece. No, passion was a silent yet sizeable force; it was the gentle nudge in the right direction, the glimmer of assurance amidst a dark universe of uncertainty, the soft whisper into my ear that all the dots I’ve connected – all the decisions I’ve made – are leading me along the right path.
That was the moment when everything made sense; when the meaning of the ubiquitous ‘love what you do’ cliche started manifesting from within my self.
As the late Steve Jobs had once said, “As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it”.
Experiencing the authentic meaning of truly loving what I do made me more resolute than ever to create a career path in life that would allow me to cross paths with this beautiful feeling again someday in the not-too-distant future.
People will fling all sorts of critique and questions at you, doubting your ability. Do what you’ve set out to do anyway.
In life, there will be haters. In Art, a lot more. Few will understand what you’re doing in Art, and fewer will care. Every day as an artist is a battle against your inner voice of doubt: ‘Is this good enough?’ Being an Art student was a gradual affirmation of my own abilities. It made me resolute in my beliefs about what mattered to me, and in a sense, I became my biggest supporter.
You see, when you’ve set out on a journey of creation, you often walk alone. Don’t believe me? Ask any entrepreneur you know. Standing up for something you believe in is hard, but standing up alone is even more challenging. Yet, as an artist, I’ve learnt that I MUST stand for something. Be it my own principles, the contrarian perspective that society refuses to acknowledge, or the faint whimper of the minority that has been subdued into silence by the clumping boots of the incumbents. I’ve learnt to stand upright for the beliefs I hold dear to my heart.
Time spent doing what you love is never time wasted
In the entire first year as an Art student, I only made one piece of work that made it to the final exhibition. The other pieces were deemed experiments or thrown away. In other words, the days and months I spent conceptualising and creating them faded into nothing.
At first, this realisation was hard to recognise, and much tougher to swallow. If I had used this time to solve Math problems or create Chemistry equations instead, the practice would probably have allowed me to score higher in the final examinations. So why would I waste my time on Art experiments that were bound for the bin?
Only in retrospect have I come to realise that the time will pass anyway. So, why not focus on something that I’d rather do? You see, time that you spent doing something you love is never time wasted.
Have a strong why.
There are bound to be days when your flow of creativity is reduced to a trickle, your experiment falls apart again for the millionth time, and that flame of resolution within you sputters into smoke, just to top it all off. There will be bad days. During days like these, the only thing that can propel you forward is one word: Why.
During the six months of failed weekly experiments, the calls of surrender and submission have never been louder. In the end, what pulled me through? My love for the artistic process, and the determination to prove certain people wrong. Being the only one in my Art class without prior art experience, I was faced with a sea of doubters, in which I too was one of them. Knowing that I had a lot of doubts to extinguish was incredible motivation to continue trodding through the hellish days.
What I can tell you, my friend, is this: Have an extremely strong why. Place purpose on a pedestal, centre it in the core of all you do, and acknowledge it every single day of your life. Without a sense of purpose, you’ll feel as though your life isn’t worth living. Without purpose, you’re lost.
Support others along the way.
Creation is a solo journey, but the journey of creation is never walked alone. This is the paradox that confronts every creator. Humans are social creatures, and my artistic journey was a two-year testimonial towards that fact.
In Art, as well as in life, collaboration and support for one another is the only way to truly bring about progress, understanding and open-mindedness. In the studio, a simple act such as buying art supplies or lunch for a fellow artist could lead to positive critique in return as the other artist views your work through a fresh pair of lens.
Similarly, in life, one way to truly bring about progress is through collaboration, not competition. Growing up, I’ve been taught that competition is healthy for a balanced society. You might even use Game Theory and price wars to back your claim. Sure, you might argue that competition forces innovation. But, have you realised how collaboration fosters innovation?
You see, Art is unlike every other subject taught to us in school. It is not merely a subject to be tested on, graded and shoved into the recesses of our memory. Art is a lifestyle; it’s a way of living that influences our idiosyncrasies and shapes our character, gradually weaving itself into the fabric of our lives and beings.
