Art is Personal

Every day a number of daily deviations are chosen, numerous feature articles are submitted and countless journals of thumbnails published.  Every - single - devious day this happens - community members, volunteers and staff all come together and share in a love of art. It doesn't always go well and sometimes a piece of artwork I adore, strikes the wrong chord with someone else and vice versa but regardless of the message received the artwork achieved the goal of becoming personal and striking an emotion.  There are no rules that state this emotion should always be happy and fluffy. I'm personally inspired by a different kind of image, one that challenges my feelings and ideals and sometimes, ones that make me uncomfortable.  Art is powerful but above all it is personal and after so many years on deviantART, as an artist and staff member, I've seen it time and again in varying ways.

As an artist, my art is very personal.  Every image I create tells a story, if only to me and what I learned is that even the absolutely obvious intent and message to me.. can be completely lost on someone else.  Does that make them stupid? not at all, it means that my art spoke to them differently and it can be for a number of reasons. It could be relative to what they were feeling that day or it could be speaking to something that happened in their past or it could very well be the paragon of their greatest fear and while it is my artwork and their was an intention, there's nothing wrong with someone else seeing something completely different.  

So where is this coming from? Well it's been sitting in my brain for a while but one of today's daily deviations really spoke to me:

:thumb130299594:

My personal take on this image is that it's a greater socio-political message about creation of the world being god's mistake, however, I have no idea if that was the artist's intention and frankly I don't care to know.  That's what I got out of it and I love this image, it's powerful and disturbing and meaningful for me.  Reading through the others you will come across messages about abortion and miscarriage and disgust and anger and awe and countless other emotions and opinions.

Perfect.  Why perfect? because all of those messages and feelings are true, for each and every one of those people that have commented on them and there's nothing wrong with that.

I've often said to people that being featured (articles, daily deviations, journals etc) can be both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes being thwarted into the spotlight against your control can bring upon some rather nasty attitude and it can be a lot to deal with but I'll share a secret with you:

If a piece of artwork manages to elicit an emotion - be it positive or negative - in my opinion, it has more than earned it's place.  So the next time you see something that you absolutely hate and don't understand and want to leave hateful messages on the image or come after the person who featured it - remember that I've said this and that means that the art has successfully bested you

And if your piece of artwork manages to accumulate a wealth of negativity because of a controversial subject or whatever it may be, remember the silver lining - Your art made people feel -  Then pat yourself on the back and go create your next masterpiece.

Art is so beyond a few words, art is a personal journey of mind, body and soul - both to create and to experience and we'd all do better as a community to consider that.