Finding My Voice as an Artist

CREATIVE PROCESS—POST 1

It has taken what seems like a lifetime to find my voice as an artist. Does that mean I can finally call myself an artist without feeling like an absolute fraud? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not, but it actually doesn't matter to me any more either. I just AM. Call me what you want, or at worst, say that I have the true heart of an artist if nothing else!

A few of my paintings sent to a pen pal. © 2022 Linnie Aikens Lindsay

I break the rules.

1) The rules of perspective is the most obvious one, of course, but I have come to embrace that one as both Cezanne and Van Gogh displayed terrible use of perspective in their paintings and they are still lauded almost 200 years later.

2) I break the art critic rule of picking a style, a medium, and genre and sticking with them. To me, an artist CREATES. Period. I use whatever tools, medium, style, genre that feels right for the moment and might best express my feelings at that point in time.

3) No, here I'm talking about breaking the contemporary art rule of picking one lane—either decorative or deeply emotional, the former lane often judged as "dilettante art," and the latter lane, "real art," as determined by the current art critics and art professors who set themselves up as the omniscient authorities of fine art.

The general art community consensus is that if you've chosen the emotional or conceptual lane, your art should be moody, minimal and sometimes even difficult and uncomfortable. If you've chosen the decorative and beautiful lane, it's really not serious art—just decorative for matching sofas and carpets. I laugh because, using this definition, most of the renaissance masters might fall into this kind of art, despite their phenomenal skill and mastery. At that time, however, the art critics considered this to be the only "real art."

I wish we as humans didn't always have to put everything into pretty little boxes by insecurities and judgements, which change through time anyway with the change of civilizations and cultures. Me? I refuse to stay in my art lane, and I eschew a lot of the art rules, while creating with integrity and work ethic (e.g., I don't steal other artists work, splash some symbol over their work and call it my own....yes, that is happening!! Shameful!), and I try to use beauty as a carrier for depth, not a substitute for it. In this way, I accidentally, but unapologetically, create art that is accessible without being simplistic, blending "Sunday painter" subjects with gallery sensibilities. Basically, inadvertently initially, because of my natural reflective and philosophical nature, I smuggle serious visual and emotional intelligence into "friendly" subject matter. So, I've been told anyway. I've been often accused of thinking too much, and it comes out in my art, I guess. But I mean, truly, beauty just makes us happy, and there is nothing wrong with that, and in that vein, I'm personally more interested in the kind of painting that feels peaceful at first glance and keeps revealing new layers the longer I sit with it. I don't want to be smacked in the face with it and have it jar my nerves and unsettle my stomach, although there is a place and time for that too; it's just not me.

Most people I know want art around them that feels good to be around—art they can live with and engage with no matter how they are feeling that day. I am no different. Beauty is not the opposite of depth, but one of the ways we can access depth. I love hiding real emotion, memory and story inside color, light, and cozy spaces. As a storyteller at heart as well as an artist, a sense of narrative in my art just feels as natural to me as breathing.

A lot of art asks you to chose between beauty and meaning: it's either pretty and easy to live with, or it's serious and emotionally heavy. My work is deliberately different. I create paintings that feel like sanctuary—lush gardens, quiet courtyards, glowing skies and forests—that are immediately welcoming, but quietly carry deeper stories of resilience, community, reflection, growth and transformation. They're created to meet you where you are on an ordinary day, and still be there for you on the hard ones.

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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".