Personal Narrative: What Does It Mean To Be An Artist

What Does It Mean to be an Artist?
When I was in High school, I took Art History AP, where I studied crude sketches on cave walls to Rembrandt’s Baroque paintings to Picasso’s weird looking Modernist paintings. From that class, I witnessed art evolve from and devolve into lines on white paper. After studying cubist and modernist art that are basically lines drawn with no skill, I determined art died long ago. Things considered as art today are just a bunch of lines with colors, or a jumble of words that are lifeless. However, this interpretation is only looking through my perspective, my interpretation.
During the seminar at University of the Pacific, Sam Pierstorff says we all need to express ourselves in different ways: for boys it is sports,
This statement felt very wrong because scribbling on paper does not require profound inspiration or immense thought processing. For example, I could be dozing off in class with a pen in my hand and making streaks on my notes and call it art. Again, this was just my interpretation. Nevertheless, my way of thinking is a part of the the idea mentioned by Lee. Lee goes on to states art has multiple interpretations and vary greatly from person to person, most not always agreeing. In my mind this too did not make sense. The artist had a set idea he or she wanted to convey through the art and that should be the goal. The mere fact that other people arrive at different conclusions would show the artist failed. So does that mean artists are puzzles and have trouble conveying their ideas? No, in fact they try to cater to everyone’s mind. Instead of appealing to one’s own selfish desire of screaming whatever was on their mind through art, artists use their art to strike cords within people and allow them to make their own connections to the piece. Therefore, I arrived at this conclusion: Everyone finds a way to express themselves through poetry, painting, or writing, but what sets artists apart is their effort: trying their best to create a piece that resonates with everyone to personally connect to by considering both sides of the artwork as creator and