Artistic Inclination

So, are you an Artist

My nephew is 17 years old and he is a fantastic artist. Show him anything and he will draw it. Unfortunately that artistic inclination will disappear as he will never get enough training from school to make it better. 

Our schools use the one and only hour per week art lesson for anything but art, if an Arabic teacher needed an hour extra, she or he will take that class, and so will the social studies teacher. I am not saying that all other subjects are not important, of course they are, but art is important as well, we might have a Michael Angelo or a Picasso in our class room, but because we do not give them enough grounding, they will unfortunately never be.

While counseling students, I get those future Michael Angelos' who want to do Art at University level, so the first question is, “where is your portfolio”? The mouth drops, and a big sigh occurs, “what is a portfolio”? Well, most art schools require seeing the student’s art work, before he or she are accepted. The art work has to show creativity as well as talent, it has to show the students inner feelings, why this particular style was chosen, and who inspired him or her to draw. Normally 20 pieces of artwork are requested, some of them will need to be from sketched pieces until the final art piece. Of course, some of the more respectable universities want to see if the student had entered a competition or participated in an exhibition, and the list of requirements goes on.

I do not want to talk about the industry behind the artists (canvas, paint, pencils, brushes, etc). I looked around many bookshops and stationary stores to buy art equipment for my children, what I found are either very expensive or really primitive.

I am not saying that a young artist in our world will never become a good artist, he or she may well become an artist, and a brilliant one too, even without any training from the schools.  We would have many more artists than what we have now if we trained them well. A message to all teachers: “leave that lonely hour a week alone and let our kids use the brush and draw”.

The same concept can be applied to music, film, video production, graphic design and the like.  All of these subjects are not taught in our schools.  But these are important aspects of our lives.  How many hours people spend in front of TV or go to the movies? read books and magazines, decorates ones home, One can easily say that its many hours in a day. I  would love to see a movie produced by a local kid, and the same movie recognized in an international setting.  But these are my dreams!!

For inquiries on art courses, contact me on suad@ezone.ae