Aesthetics

I've decided that I'm an artist because of aesthetics.

It's not the easiest conclusion to arrive at. I've never really seen myself as one.  I've always thought of artists a people who have their works published, or people whose names are in galleries, people with a little hype or buzz surrounding them... people who get paid to create.

By that definition, I am not an artist.

I am a waiter.

I have been other things, of course. I have been a student, I have been a tutor, mentor, librarian, and bingo scoresheet salesman (Maybe I'll tell y'all that story at some other time). But artist? Artists have studios, artists have commissions, artists have the proper tools.

I don't even really see myself as a filmmaker (despite having a degree in the aforementioned practice). I just have this crappy camera tat I bought in high school, which I shoot films that I edit on a computer that my parents went halvsies on with me when I graduated from 12th grade. How can I be an artist when I don't have the proper tools?

I like independent films.

I like the idea of taking a dream or vision for something that you really want and doing it without anyone's approval/finding. I love when an indie film makes it out to mainstream audiences and all the big studio exec scramble like mad to copy its success. It's a bit laughable to see these quasi-independent ventures that are actually funded by the big studios trying really hard to act like they're part of the indie "In crowd." They make their films look dirty and gritty like the low budget films that they so love with the goal in mind to re create the "magic" of the other film's reception.

Why would they do that? Make things a lower quality than they are able, I mean...

Is it just because they are trying to fit in, or did they just miss the point entirely?

I think I have a few things in common with them, and I think that's why I never (until recently) saw myself as an artist. 

It is not the quality of the medium that is important. The weight, in fact, rests upon the quality of EXPRESSION.

The artist's tools are inside of him. It is not what quality and grandiose title that is bestowed upon the artist that makes his work worthy of our viewing. It is weather or not he is able to speak truth, and enlighten us about our own lives. 

Everything else is just a question of aesthetics...

Let me put it to you this way. If I gave Rembrandt a piece of paper and a 64 pack of crayons and told him to make something, he would make art. He is an artist, and no matter what the medium, he will create art. If I give a big studio, professional tools, and a 10 million dollar commission to the guy who draws pictures of penises on the walls of bathrooms, he will use those resources to draw a huge penis. Because he's a dick.

I can't judge my own work through the same lens as other artists. I think that's one of the biggest problems with human beings today. The "compari-sin" if you will... I am not the next Monet, or Picasso, and I will not any time soon be creating works like them. I do not have the resources (or more than likely, the skill) to make what they make. I may have just a piece of paper and a 64 pack of crayons, but I can create art.

Because I'm not a Dick.

Everything else is a question of aesthetics.