Starving Artist?

About two years ago I really started thinking about pursuing a career as an artist.  I already had my ed. degree and was teaching art (among other subjects), but I really wanted to be known for more.  Now don’t get me wrong, I think that teaching is a very honorable career and teachers don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, both from the students and society.  However, I don’t just want to inspire the 200 or so students I teach each year with my art, I want to inspire as many people as I  can.  In the past 6 months, I feel that I have really starting making some great strides to achieving this goal.  The amount of people that have seen my work online, from all around the world, is really quite amazing. 

On one hand, I feel as though I am at the top of my game and I have acomplished at lot in such a shot period of time.  On the other hand, however, I feel as though I’ve hit a wall due to the mountainous journey that lays ahead of me.  I would love for a publisher to call me on the phone to say, “we seen you’re work and we love it… we want to sign you to a huge contract”.  But the reality of it is that with everything that’s going on in our economy today, it’s very unlikely that it will happen any time soon. 

There is a great deal of security in my teaching position.  No matter how bad our economy gets, we will still need teachers (I have even more security since my major is math).  And although it would be nice to think that we will still need artists (and to some extent we will), the fact is that art is a luxury that a lot of people are going to have to do without for the next few years.  I’m sure things will pick up eventually, but until then, I feel as though my art career is in limbo.  With that said, I will continue to make art and promote my work because it is what I love to do… of that I am certain!

How I Got Here

Hi everyone,

Despite being somewhat clueless about the whole blogging scene (I’ve only ever read a handful), I’ve decided that it would be a good idea to start an art blog. I must admit that the idea of starting an art blog is not something that I came up with on my own.  In an effort to get my name and images some more exposure, I did a search in “the google” (a Bushism in honor of today’s inauguration) for “how to market your art online”  This led me to a very informative article on why artists should blog (check out the article link if you’d like to read more).  I’m not really sure how often I am going to blog, or if anybody is actually going to read it, but it can’t hurt to give it a shot!

I am assuming that since you are reading this, it is because you were directed here through my website or one of the art sites that I post my work on.  However, on the off chance that you have never seen my work, you can check it out at joereimerfineart.com.

So, I suppose I should tell everyone a little more about myself than what is in my general bio on my website.

As long as I can remember I have always been drawing.  I can’t remember much of what I learned in school or “adult” church services as a child, but I can vividly remember the cartoon characters and mountain landscapes that I drew during them.  It wasn’t until high school that I became aware of the notion that doing art in some capacity could become a career for me. In fact, it wasn’t until my early 20s that I actually started to pursue the idea.

In high school, I remember tossing around the idea of becoming a graphic designer, but after researching the prospect, the lack of security and low wages eliminated that path pretty quickly.  In grade 10 and 11 I had a great art teacher, Greg Swainson, whose personal work was very inspiring (even though I didn’t truly appreciate it until a few years later).  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the way that he balanced a teaching career and an artistic career would be an example that I could, and still do look to today (please take a moment to check out Greg’s website).  In grade 12, I transferred back to the school that I had gone to for junior high, which was much smaller than my grade 10/11 school.  Unfortunately, this school did not have any sort of art program. Although I was not planning on pursing an art career, I still had not completely ruled it out.  I was very determined to get my credits for grade 12 art.  Luckily, a friend of our family used to teach the art program at the school and she was willing to take me on as her student. She provided me with a lot of support and inspiration as I completed the grade 12 art course. Towards the end of the course, I was showing my work to our vice-principal. He was very impressed with my work and encouraged me to go to university to get an education degree so that I could become the school’s art teacher.  However, I was very strong in math and the sciences and the salary of an engineer seemed much more appealing than that of a teacher.

Through two years of engineering at university, I can’t ever really remember picking up a drawing pencil or a paintbrush (except for the mandatory second year design course).  After sitting through a presentation from a mechanical engineer designer (which is what I wanted to be) and realizing that the vast majority of his job entailed designing nuts and bolts and other tedious tasks, I decided that engineering wasn’t for me. I had always enjoyed helping my classmates with their homework, so the decision to leave engineering and pursue an education degree was a very exciting and life changing event.

Although the idea of teaching art was floating around somewhere in my mind, the choice of a math major and physical sciences minor made much more sense since many of those courses would transfer over.  I did, however, decide to take an introductory level university art course just for fun.  It was not fun.  It was the first art course that I had taken that I actually hated.  Being that it was a university level course, it was a huge let-down to find out first hand that it was no more complex than most of the high school art courses I had taken.

Now, with that being said, there was one project in particular that was quite a breakthrough for me and so in that sense, taking the course was worth it.  We were studying Matisse’s “Green Line” and had to do a self-portrait in the same style. I had never felt so connected to a paint brush before as I did with that painting.  I all of a sudden had the freedom to ignore the restrictions of the “colour in the lines” mentality and was able to loosely apply the paint on the canvas wherever it felt appropriate.  Another breakthrough was the ability to use bright, vibrant colours without feeling as if I had to tone them down.  Mixing of hues, tones and shades took place on the canvas itself, rather than on the palette.

I learned two very important lessons from that art course.  The first is that university is not all that it’s cracked up to be.  Now, I’m not saying that university isn’t important or that it doesn’t have it’s place, because it is and it does.  However, to say that it is the best place to develop your skills (specifically as an artist) is, in my opinion, a huge overstatement.  I honestly believe that I have learned more about being an artist and developed my skills to a higher level in the past two years on my own, than I ever could have through a traditional art education at the university level (please note that this is just my personal opinion and the outcome may be very different for others).  The second lesson I learned is that trying new things is the only way to grow as an artist. If you only continue to do the same things that you’ve done, you’ll never achieve that next big breakthrough. If you do fifty paintings and hate forty-nine of them, but absolutely love one of them, then those fifty paintings were a success.

With those lessons learned, I completed my education degree and got my first job teaching math at a local high school. The position was only for one semester, so when I started searching for jobs for the following school year, I thought I would contact my former high school and see if they were still looking for an art teacher. In fact, they were and so the following fall I started up the art program. I have been teaching now for the past four years, all the way from grade 7 to 12, everything from art, computers, math, science, health and Bible.

As much as I do enjoy teaching most days, a couple of years ago I really began to feel the desire to pursue success in my own art.  I did not want to be known by the cliché of, “those who can’t do, teach”.  Although his work has now become a little ‘too’ popular, Michael Godard’s work really inspired me when I first saw it. His use of colour and the fact that nobody else is doing what he is doing are things that I continually aspire to.

So, that essentially brings us to the present.  I could go into more detail about what has been happening over the past year or two, but I think I will save that for future blogs.  If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading!

Joe

joereimerfineart.com