Firstly, if you have ADHD then this blog has been written with you in mind along with everyone else reading.  Maybe ask to buy some nice herbal tea, I recommend Green Tea and Lemongrass.  Do you need all that caffeine?

Ok here goes for my blog.  Hannah Witton, a well known Youtube vlogger from the UK has raised some interesting talking points in her recent video entitled ‘Is Art Stupid?’  I encourage you to watch her video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUNplRKexA before reading my blog piece.

Her video is 3 minutes 49 seconds long and will include fun mimicry of museum paintings and a small amount of bosom holding.

Let me tell you a little about my youthful days.  In my teens and 20’s I never much cared for the news not unless it was really big news.  Kinda ‘meh’, it just wasn’t for me.  ‘Hush’ went my Dad as the 6 O’clock news started.  Total yawn.  School exams, oh my, at that time if you’d asked me to study school exams I’d have made my excuses and let you get on with it.

This is all absurd to me now I’m 41 years of age.  I learnt during my early 20’s that I’d let the two most important years of my entire schooling days go-by in apathy.  And to think I’d been Head Boy just a few years earlier.

You see, nobody is going to actually live your life for you.  Their advice, their insistence, their reasoning.. your way in life is YOURS along with the decisions you make.

Okay, so what has this got to do with art?  Erm, good question.

ART was the only subject I cared about at school with regards to my exams.  I genuinely loved Biology, Chemistry, Math, History, and English.  Geography was okay.  I love all these subjects as much now as I did then, the latter more so than I did.

However when I received an E grade GCSE for Art..

..I was absolutely LIVID.  Actually I need to write this ‘lllliiiivvvviiiidddd’ just to emphasise my point because I can go back in my mind to that very moment and recall exactly how I felt.

I mean, how dare someone grade me an E for a piece of art that I’d spent many hours working on with all my earnest effort?

At 16 years old I really liked the concept of what I’d painted for my art exam.  Regrettably I don’t have that artwork now.  I imagine the Exam Board took one look at it and buried it in the deepest darkest depths of Grecian Hades never to be seen again.  It would be wonderful for me to see that artwork again.

Anyway the rather stark point is that I didn’t fully understand art then, not until I started picking up my new digital camera into my mid-to-late twenties.  You see, a new freedom was now with me.  It’s called Contentedness.

Contentedness brought me the freedom to express myself better.  At school my Art Teachers had verbally expressed genuine appreciation for some of my art.  Yet skill often takes time to develop.

So, ‘what is art?’  Well, you’re the person who decides what art is because it’s your personal opinion.

By definition art from an artist’s perspective is ‘skill acquired by creativity, inspiration, experience, study, and/or observation.’.  Defining art in a way to encompass all reasonable perspectives I say:

‘Art is works of creative skill, intellect and/or phenomenal occurrence relative to the perception and/or imagination of creatures biological or otherwise.’ – Matt The Unfathomable Artist, Copyright © 1st December 2015.

Am I art?  Are you art?  To me, you most definitely are art.  Individual.  Unique.  Extraordinary.

Whilst typically processioning through a Museum or Art Gallery you choose what you like, dislike, agree with, object to.  Relate, don’t relate.  Love.  Hate.  That’s the cool thing.  We all have different ideas about art.  Afterall, it’s your imagination.

Museum Curators do their best to envisage our collective artistic interests through their vast experience.  They will seek to exhibit up-to-the-minute fashionable art during each calendar year.

Knights in shining armour wowing the honour of Maidens.  Landscapes of castles that still exist today.  Depictions of horror, life, death, birth, beauty and repulsiveness.  Things to inspire, to lift your mood, to bring you into a different sense of thoughtfulness.

Maybe take a look here – https://theunfathomableartist.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/rubens-massacre-of-the-innocents/ for an example of highly provocative art.

N.B. I first discovered Wassily Kandinsky’s work in December 2014.  I was as excitedly ecstatic at seeing his ‘Composition’ works as I was seeing the Matisse art signature for the first time.