Spending more time studying art makes you stand out in a crowd of sameness.

Spending more time studying art makes you stand out in a crowd of sameness.

I don’t mean that you’re going to stand out because you’re suddenly going to start dying your different hair colors and wearing crazy clothes ( although that happens sometimes). Instead, you’re going to stand out because you’re going to have a skill set that everyone wants and needs, but few people have.

Author Daniel Pink remarked, “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people…will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”

Now before you go and binge watch a bunch of art tutorials on youtube, let me be clear, when I say studying art, I mean that you’re learning technique + problem solving + communication, and it’s pretty hard to get all of those things by doing youtube searches. Instead, it’s much easier ( and more fun), if you’re part of a learning community, with an expert guiding you.

 “Today, people can expect to have many jobs in multiple fields during their careers. The average person born in the latter years of the baby boom held 11 jobs between the ages of 18 and 44, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The new social contract is different: only people who have the knowledge and skills to negotiate constant change and reinvent themselves for new situations will succeed.”

Making pretty pictures vs. finding problems and developing creative solutions.

Pretty pictures serve a purpose. Those that make them often find a lot of joy and pleasure in the making, and those that appreciate them, often find their home transformed with a new work of art. Or they purchase a piece that reminds them of a special trip or person. There’s nothing wrong with pretty pictures. But there is a problem with believing that that is all there is to making and learning about art.

The idea that making pretty pictures is as deep as art goes is often used as a reason to cut art programs, to not invest time and money in learning, and as a reason to always put art last when creating your course schedule, often allowing it to fall off altogether.

Viewing art as a tool to developing creative thought, problem-solving and critical thinking skills opens new doors, and allows you to continue to explore making the art that you love while developing the skills to solve tomorrow’s problems, making you a sought after commodity, instead of a starving artist.

Often parents and students come to me, with a love for art, but fear that there just aren’t any jobs out there. Today I want you to take a moment, and look at art as a learning tool. Understand that we teach math and science because we’re trying to get you to learn how to solve problems. Art takes that one step further; it strives to teach how to solve problems that don’t have one right and clear answer. Once you learn about the creative process, you’re going to see that it’s pretty similar to the scientific method.

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They key is understanding what creativity is, and how art can be used to teach and develop your creative ability.

” First, creativity must represent something different, new or innovative…. creativity must also be appropriate to the task at hand.A creative response is useful and relevant. “

~James C Kaufman/ Creativity 10