9:40pm September 15, 2014

Being a self-taught ‘outsider artist’ and whether those words piss me off or not varies moment to moment.

I wrote this and forgot about it, but I’m posting it now. It’s super long so there’s a tl;dr at the end and I’m putting most of it under a cut.

So lichgem reblogged this post about the way people’s art is handled after they die. Especially crazy people’s art. The way that one guy, for instance, he was crazy and he loved cats and he painted lots of cats. And psychology textbooks and other books have rearranged his paintings so the most normal looking cats come first and the most psychedelic-looking cats come last, even though that is not the chronological order they were painted in. Then they try to show this as his “descent into madness” and so forth. His name was Louis Wain, try to remember him for who he was, not who he was not.

I didn’t want to hijack a thread with such a wonderful poem so I am posting my response here. The poem is Heartless. Rather that’s its title, so you can click on it. It has more heart to it than many poems I’ve read.

Anyway, so.

People already analyze my work. They do it in terms I’m unfamiliar with. While I took two art classes in college (2-d design and 3-d design), I am not well-versed in anything about art. I also took some painting classes at a local mall and I was considered so bad that the teacher would paint my paintings for me and sign my name to them, a source of long-term shame and fear to paint anything at all.

I’m considered one of those scary awful Self-Taught Outsider Artists, and I go to an art program for self-taught artists with developmental disabilities. The level of talent there ranges from things that you would see in a child’s coloring book to things that seriously rival Van Gogh. If I had to rate myself, which I generally try not to… I’d not be as good as their best artists, but nowhere near the worst either. I guess “good but not great” would sum my art up.

But the point of going there isn’t to have better art than someone else, it’s to enjoy yourself wherever your level of talent is at. There are staff on hand to get advice if you want it, but pretty much you can do your own thing, unless of course you have asshole staff who came with you.

There’s this one guy whose staff picks on him the entire time he’s there. He makes sounds that are inaudible even to me, and I have hyperacusis. And if he keeps making those sounds she ‘puts him in time out’ for ‘disturbing everyone else’ even though nobody else is disturbed. He prefers sculpture to drawing (I know some blind people draw, but it seems obvious why he prefers sculpture) but she makes him draw a certain amount before he’s allowed to do sculpture.

His drawings consist of making circles over and over again. His staff thinks it’s because he’s too stupid to know any better than to make circles. I think his staff is too stupid to see passive resistance when she sees it. She makes him use different colors for his circles, periodically passing him a different color. He can’t see the colors and has no interest in the colors, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to “normalize” him.

Anyway, I’ve complained to administration many times about his staff, but they’re at a loss for what to do. They can tell she creates a chilling effect on the rest of us, most of whom are institution survivors. We go there for freedom of expression and she is always there taking it away from one guy who is too cowed to fight back. One bad staff can make a great place feel institutional in a heartbeat.

The woman who runs the program went to art school but got disillusioned with it. In particular, they kept teaching her that the best art has to come from pain. So it was fashionable for artists at the school to act as if they were in pain, or act out more pain than they actually felt, in order to fit the image. I’ve run into people like that. I’ve also run into artists who deliberately put on an act of eccentricity that is in sharp contrast to their real self. I sense their real self loud and clear, and I see the eccentricity with the non-sensing parts of me, and the result is a clash much more painful than a hot pink plaid shirt with a skirt with bright green polka dots. I find it jarring to be around such people, and so did Jayne, so instead she went into this program. She believes that art can come from joy, not just sorrow, and she likes to see it when we do work about what brings us joy, rather than just work about sad or difficult things. (Although she has no problem with those things either. It’s when it’s forced, that it’s a problem.)

So… I’m one of those self-taught “outsider” artists, supposedly. My friend has a friend who went to art school. He got a degree there. His art is very technically proficient because he went to art school. Yet he has trouble finding work. Everyone wants to display his work as that of an ‘outsider artist’ because he’s autistic. He refuses to take that term away from real outsider artists, people who taught ourselves art without an art school background. And he also feels offended that nobody will take his art education seriously just because he’s autistic. And I totally see why.

I have mixed feelings about the term outsider art. It reminds me too much of those weird ideas people have that autistic people and crazy people exist outside of the influence of mainstream society. And the fact is, we don’t. Not a single one of us is as cut off from our cultures as the creators of terms like 'art brut’ and 'outsider art’ want to believe of us. Worse, you know that awful saying about “If you know you’re crazy, you’re not crazy”? Well it’s applied to outsider art as well. Supposedly if we understand that we are creating art, then it’s not outsider art anymore.

Which feels disgusting and exploitative on every possible level. Outsider art is supposed to contain this purity that stems from being crazy or developmentally disabled. And they want to use that purity for their own ends. They want access to our creations because they see us as pure and unsullied by the corruption in the mainstream art world. And they see even the fact that our art looks 'untrained’ as a part of that purity.

A lot of people believe that disabled people, especially cognitively or psychiatrically disabled people, are pure and unsullied by the societies we grow up in. And they think even more so if we grew up in an institution, even though institutions are a part of the same society everyone else lives in. Our art is not somehow magically removed from the art of anyone else. And most of the peculiarities of our art come from lack of formal training, not from our own purity of heart or something.

Lack of formal training is not always a bad thing, when it comes to art, though. I know there are people who believe that everyone with any talent at art should receive formal training, that people without formal training are not real artists, and the like. But I’d rather see someone with a lot of creativity who is lacking in technical skill, than someone with great technical skill and no creativity. Of course people with great technical skill and great creativity are amazing, but most people don’t have that combination of gifts.

But I have stood by and listened as people talked about how self-taught artists aren’t any good. They weren’t thinking of me, they were just talking about people in general. They talked about how self-taught artists often have too much ego about our work. Like we think we don’t have to work to improve ourselves or something. Which is completely not true. And formal art education is not the only way to improve your art. Sometimes it even makes your art worse, if you’re trying to do something one way and your professors are insisting that you have to do it another way. It all depends on the person and their art, whether they’d benefit from a formal art education.

But I feel like my art is being picked apart even while I’m alive. And being an ‘outsider artist’ with all that’s supposed to mean, is a big part of it.

People say that my art isn’t good enough because I have no formal training and my style is therefore not informed by formal painting techniques.

People don’t even want to touch the fact that my art is about sensing, and that a lot of the technique I use is specifically to evoke what a sensing world would look like, visually.

Except for the people who almost want to worship it because sensing, to them, is something ‘spiritual’ that cognitively disabled people are ‘tapped into’ and other people are not.

I’m honestly not sure which is worse: The people who won’t take my work seriously because I’m self-taught, or the people who take it too seriously because they think cognitively disabled people have a direct line to whatever gods they worship.

It’s hard to find people who can appreciate my art for what it is:

Far more creative than technically skilled.
Based primarily in sensing, rather than in realism. Not as an ‘art style’ choice but as a choice in how to portray something that’s difficult to portray in any medium.
My cognitive disabilities do matter to the art. They can’t be separated from it like some people’s can. When your art is based in sensing, which is something cognitively disabled people experience more than nondisabled people, then disability matters to it. It’s also the truth that being cognitively disabled has limited my access to art instruction throughout my life, and limited what I could get out of it on the rare occasions that I had anything approaching art instruction.
I have to deal with figuring out whether people really like my art, or whether they just think I’m good “for someone with a disability”.

That last one, I have found ways to check. At the art program I’m in, the staff walk around the tables telling us how great our art is. More than once, I’ve been painting the background, as in one or two colors splotched around on the paper without anything connecting them yet. And have had people tell me how amazing my work was.

So I’ve learned not to trust them when they say that. When I can trust them is when any of the following happens:

“That’s really nice —“ [does double take] “Oh wow that’s actually really good.”
“Have your paintings ever been in galleries?”
“Do you sell your paintings? I know a lot of potential buyers if you do.”
“Hey everyone come here and look at this. Look at what sie’s done with the colors here…” etc.

I listen around the rest of the room and, sure enough, the only people who get that kind of response are the people whose paintings would be considered ‘good’ by most people.

So I have learned the difference between a compliment and a false compliment, when it comes to my paintings. Which is not something I should’ve had to learn. I understand the point of encouraging everyone to work to the best of their ability, but you can do that without patronizing ‘compliments’ that everyone knows aren’t real. Yes, people with intellectual disabilities can tell when you’re using That Voice on them, and they don’t appreciate it any more than you would.

I think my paintings have meaning. I think that they have meaning specifically in that they try to capture experiences of the world that are minority experiences. Experiences of the sensory world, experiences most people don’t have. Experiences that can be translated into painting. Experiences that I have only ever seen autistic people paint, but in their styles, not mine — Donna Williams and Christophe Pillault are my favorites, but their styles are definitely not my own. I think it’s important for heavily sensing artists to be able to make art that reflects sensing, however we decide to portray that. And I think it’s important for this to be respected as a choice we can make, rather than seen as substandard art produced by people who couldn’t be bothered to learn ‘real’ art technique. Hell, some highly sensing artists do use formal art technique. But those of us who don’t aren’t necessarily worse.

I know that I don’t like being seen as part of a group of people who are uninfluenced by the society around us. I don’t think such a group of people exist. I find the entire idea offensive. Everyone, bar none, is influenced by the society we grow up in. Autistic people are no exception. Crazy people are no exception. People with intellectual disabilities are no exception. We are not pure unsullied founts of True Art.

And yet, there’s something about the category of Outsider Artist that rings true, despite its rather disgusting origins and connotations. My art comes from outside of the art world. It doesn’t follow the artistic conventions of the art world. It depicts things directly related to my disabilities, so it is also Disability Art, whether I want it to be that or not. It’s heavily sensing-oriented, which makes it Cognitive Disability Art, and Developmental Disability Art, and Autism Art, since all of those things can result in a person who is highly sensing.

But for me, it’s My Art, and that’s what matters. For me, sensing is Part Of Me, and it doesn’t matter what diagnostic label you put on it, it’s mine. These experiences that lead to this artwork are my experiences, and yes, you absolutely can tie them to disability experiences. And this is why I have allowed myself to be exhibited in disability art shows in the past, among other, mostly self-taught, disabled artists.

And yes, you can tie my art style to being self-taught, to not having the tools that art students learn, or at least to not using them. I neither have nor use them. There are art students and art school graduates who go to great lengths to unlearn those tools, to try to produce art like mine, and that confuses me. Why try to look like the person that all the other art students point and laugh derisively at? Why try to make your art look like the art I’ve seen art students discussing — at length — as that terrible stuff that only self-taught people would call art. The people who put self-taught in air quotes and laugh at the very notion that a person such as me could produce worthwhile art. I’ve seen them, right next to me, not noticing that I was an artist, let alone one of those dreadful self-taught artists, so it was safe for them to have these derisive conversations over and over again, right where they could pierce my heart.

Because I don’t pretend to be a great artist. But I know my art has worth. I know that people see it not just as “Pretty good for an autistic person,” but “Pretty good, I’d want a copy.” I know people are actively eager to see what I’ll paint next. I know that while, like all artists, my paintings vary in quality, the good ones are good enough for galleries. But more importantly than good enough for other people, they’re good enough for my heart. They’re good enough for my heart that says things like:

“This is how to capture the movements of a cat without showing the whole cat.”

“This is what a redwood forest looks like, just the floor, just pieces.”

“This is the story of two kittens, who tell me their story and then I have to make out what it means, because they let me paint them but they won’t talk to me in English, because they’re kittens. Orphan kittens who miss their mother, who comes back as a ghost sometimes to look over them.”

“This is what happens when you let your fingers just move, and suddenly there are beautiful ladies in dresses dancing around the page.”

“This is what happens when you just let things happen, and don’t even try to make sense of it, yet it tells an obvious story when you’re done with it.”

And those things are true. I know in my heart that like any artist, I make good paintings and bad paintings. But I also know in my heart that my good paintings are good. That even though money is no measure of worth, people have paid me for them, whether in money or in art supplies. I never see them paying for things by people they merely patronize. And people are interested in my paintings, they want to know what’s happening. They make Sophisticated Art-Speak Commentary about my paintings, that I don’t understand a single word of, but I know it means they’re taking me seriously as an artist.

But it is my heart that determines whether I like a painting I’ve done, or whether it’s mediocre or bad. It’s my heart that makes the paintings, not my head. I am not usually an intellectual painter, I paint from sensing, and I do best that way. And my heart tells me that my paintings talk to people on a level most people have forgotten about, if they ever knew it to begin with. That my art speaks directly to other sensing people, and that this is a good thing, because there’s not a lot of art that does.

I have a friend who, despite my wholly unrealistic drawing style, recognized which specific one of her four cats I had painted, despite not being told that it was any of her four cats. That tells me I got the essence of that kitten, at that moment in time. My friend is also very sensing, and she picked up the movement in the painting that other people didn’t. I eventually made her a painting of all four of her cats, and she said I got each of them perfectly. Which if you know that my rendition of a cat is, as often as not, a curved line with a cat head and maybe some legs attached, is fairly impressive.

So I know in my heart that my paintings are good, that they serve a purpose, that they are highly meaningful to at least some people. But I’m extremely self-conscious about the whole self-taught thing and the whole outsider artist label that gets put on self-taught DD and crazy people, and I’m highly ambivalent about all of those things… for reasons.

TL;DR: I’m a self-taught artist with a developmental disability and psychiatric disabilities and this makes me feel like I’m not a ‘real’ artist sometimes, but other times it makes me feel like I’m doing exactly what I am meant to be doing. Ideas like ‘outsider artist’ confuse me and sometimes I like them and sometimes I hate them. Also if you’ve seen only photos or scans of my art, you haven’t seen what it really looks like – even gallery owners have told me that my art just photographs terribly due to the layering effects that go away once photographed, and they are always pleasantly surprised to see my real paintings as opposed to photos and scans.