I want to talk just a bit about self-taught artists, specifically painters, and their responsibility to educate themselves regarding art materials if they attempt to sell their paintings as Fine Art.
You often hear the term self-taught when painters do not attend formal art school. I happen to be a self-taught artist. I am also an “internet” artist.
This does not mean I am ignorant or lacking in knowledge of art materials. I consider my paintings to be Fine Art, not craft. This also doesn’t mean that I am uneducated.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with crafting. I love Indi Crafting, I happen to own a website called HandmadeGeorgia whose sole purpose is to promote artisan crafters living and working in the State of Georgia. But my paintings are Fine Art, not craft.
There are many artists that I see on Etsy, eBay, the Internet, and at Local Juried Art Shows passing off cheap, substandard materials as Fine Art. I am not here to debate the definition of Fine Art, but I think all Fine Artists can agree at a minimuim it involves using appropriate archival methods and materials when creating one’s artwork.
FACT: Paintings made with craft paint, house paint, or student grade paint will not hold up well over time.
The paint can oxidize, or dull, peel, fade, and a myraid of other problems within just a few years of exposure to normal sunlight and air inside a office or home.
There is huge difference in painting material quality. The quaility of pigments and varnishes can have a tremendous impact on the longivity of a painting. It also affects the vibrancy, or LACK of vibrancy of color in your paintings.
I use professional artist-grade pigments. I prefer Golden Acrylics, made in the USA.
I have taken the time to educate myself about surfaces, paint, topcoats, etc. How do I do this? I learn by reading books on art, painting, and reading the paint manufacturers website as well as the Smithsonian Musuem Conservation Institute. I admit no one knows what the future holds, but I am guessing the Smithsonian knows a thing or two about how to conserve a painting.
When you buy from me, you purchase Fine Art. Here is why:
- I properly prepare my canvas before I begin a painting.
- I use only high quailty, professional artist paint that is loaded with pure, archival pigments.
- I properly seal my finished paintings with the finest varnishes and topcoats.
- I use top quailty canvas.
Since a lot of my collectors seem to be new to buying original artwork, I felt the need to explain this. My materials cost substainally more than student grade paint or craft paint. Typically, professional grade products run 3-4 times more than cheaper student quality paints.
When you purchase a gallery painting from me, you are purchasing a work of Fine Art. The mateirials are the very best available to me. The pigments are the purest that I can find on the market. The canvas itself is durable, thick, and protected from the damaging effects of time.
Archival Issues at Pasequan
After my recent visit to Pasaquan, I am, well…. disgusted that this self-taught, eccentric artist didn’t take some time to educate himself regarding materials. He spent his life creating some very wonderful work, but choose to continue to use methods that were known to be temporary.
Even his some of paintings on canvas that hung indoors were dull and lifeless after only about 50 years, due to inferior pigments. Now the residents of Marion County and the State of Georgia have the privilege of spending much more than they should to attempt to preserve this treasure. Don’t get me wrong, I agree, the place is a treasure and should be preserved. As a taxpayer, I just wish it didn’t cost so much to do so.
Too bad St. EOM didn’t take time to educate himself and use appropriate outdoor art materials. In Italy, I saw frescoes over 500 years old, in small towns, with little or no money to spend on preservation over the centuries. They looked brighter, cleaner, and more vibrant that anything in Pasaquan after only 50 years or so.
Yet, at Pasaquan, this self-taught artist choose to paint on top of concrete instead of using fresco technique. Heck, even I know paint peels off of concrete, ever seen one of those old front porches painted gray, maybe at your grandmas house? Peel City after a few years in the southern humidity.
“OK, so now I am afraid to spend money on art”, you say.
As a collector it is NOT your responsibility to know all the technical science behind paint, varnish, canvas.
As an artist, it IS my responsibility to know my business. It IS my responsibility to educate myself and use the professional materials in a professional manner.
Wake up self-taught artists! Use your brains!
This practice of ignorance among artists continues today. I have taken a workshop last fall in which a nationally acclaimed artist from California have taught us that White Gesso is just the same as Titanium White Pigment and alot cheaper to use. This dude went to not just an art school, but a fancy one up on the East Coast.
Well Gesso is not the same as White Titanium Paint. Gesso is not Pigment!
White Gesso is manufactured to go underneath pigment, as a ground, or a primer coat. Pure, White Titanium Pigment is expensive, because it contains actual Titanium! It is manufactured to be brilliant white and to stay that way! For hundreds of years, we hope!
Gesso may or may not stay white and bright. Have you tested it yourself? Have you splashed spegetti sauce on it and then tried to clean it 6 months later? Did you varnish it? No? Well now we really have a problem don’t we?
“Who cares how long the painting lasts? I’ll be dead anyway. It’s not like I am spending thousands on art, just a few hundred bucks. ” says the art collector.
Well, what if you bought a painting, you liked it so well it hung in your kitchen the rest of your life?
The artist who created it never became famous. The painting isn’t really worth all that much on the secondary art market.
But what if your grandson, who visited every week, ate your homemade pie every week, identified deeply with the painting? To him, that painting reminded him of you.
Imagine now, you are dead. (Sorry, it was a nice funeral though 
The grandchild is grown man. He now has this faded, dull, peeling, rather pathetic painting hanging in his kitchen. He loved you and he loves this painting too. It reminds him of you. Too bad you didn’t choose to buy your art from a reputable artist or gallery.
He wishes it would last long enough to pass it down to his granddaughter, who loves the painting too because it reminds her of her Grandpa.
Chances are, you paid a Fine Art price for that painting. Too bad you only received a craft quality painting.
Formally trained artists take unnecessary short cut too!
I am also amazed at the inferior materials I see on paintings created by artists who did have the luxury of receiving formal art training at a university.
I have seen paintings on the wall in a upscale art gallery in Atlanta which were painted on cheap, canvas board which only lasts a few years. Canvas board is manufactured for student use only.
Galleries owners should know better. Collectors, always look at the back of the painting. See what the canvas looks like. Ask questions before you buy. Ask lots of questions.
OK, that’s enough of my soapbox for today, gee, I’m really on a roll today! — Cindy
Great post!
I sometimes call myself an "art materials geek" but really I am just concerned with using quality materials.
I haven't seen Fine Art and craft art used as distinctions for poor quality materials before but it does make sense, since the former is meant to stand the test of time, to be archival.
Cindy, you've given me a lot to think about, since I'm always trying to draw parallels with writing, how the various art forms intersect and influence each other. This really is a fine post, and I've learned a lot from it.
My soap box is MFA programs. Maybe I'll get up on it shortly and talk about too many are, for writers at least, mostly a way to make "connections." The craft of writing, which is what after all means a piece is well-made, is often not dealt with at all. As a PhD who runs an MFA program has said "scansion" is crap. Well, not if you want to be a poet. You should know your meters and you ought to be able to recognize them and use them when you need them.
Oh, please stop me or I will start soap-boxing right here and now on your comment board! K.
Sorry, you pushed a button! I think you are mis-using the word "craft". Good craftsmanship indicates the product (painting, bowl, sculpture, etc.) is technically well made. Skill plus quality materials. Poor craftsmanship means it is technically lacking, poor or wrong materials, good materials put together wrong, etc.
Besides, it's not the technique or materials that make it ART, it's the creativity.
Definitely the creator's responsibility to use the finest materials available.
I'm just happy that visionary artists, like St. EOM just go ahead and create with what they have at hand. I agree, it's too bad he didn't have better paints and a fortune to spend on drainage.
By the way, the frescos you saw must have been indoors. Jean Charlot (who brought the fresco techniques to Diego Rivera in Mexico) said that the only appropriate material for exterior murals is glazed ceramics. That is why my father, Lew Tilley studied ceramics when he was at The Fine Arts Center Art School. We have two of his miniature tile murals. He studied with Charlot at UGA, and then taught with him at the FAC in Colorado Springs, CO.
wonderful comment Meg!
Craft probably isn't the correct word. Not sure what to use instead.
I just wish I could distinguish my paintings from those produced with poor quality materials by other self-taught artists who chanre much, much less than I do because their expenses are much, much less.
I feel like when one is creating ART, quality of supplies does is indeed insignificant. When you are SELLING it as FINE ART, then materials and technique should be archival.
It's a topic that is touchy and hard for me to communicate effectively since I am self-taught, I don't always use the correct art terms.
I am so glad you left a comment!
Very interesting and valid points told with passion. And the line I agree with the most is the Title line…
Self taught artist here whose been using anything I could get my hands on to create for years and years and years…And while my sharpied, markered, watercolored, shaving cream and food colored paintings on hand me down paper might not last into my next life, they've brought me peace and opened windows to new friends from all of the world, they've fed us when we were down, and they've been my saving grace. And I just hope they survive long enough for the folks that embraced them to get joy from them….
Beautiful work, by the way:)
I think your point is excellent and well worth making, but I do have a bit of trouble with the way you use "craft." As you say, it is a touchy issue, one that has been debated forever, probably, and very hard to pin down in words.
The best part of your post is the example of the painting in the kitchen. Very effective. And I think, as an artist, it's important to communicate the info about why you use these materials, why your work costs what it does, etc.
As a jewelry "artsan," the word "craft" probably has different meanings for me. Still, I do get irritated by the "string-beads-together" folks calling themselves artists — or even fine craftspersons. And then feel snobby.
*sigh*
There is a good reason to use impermanent construction materials-
In Bali, the temples are purposefully made from materials which degrade within one generation's lifetime. That way the elders are alive to teach the youths how to maintain the building. This has a most important purpose, to maintain THE COMMUNITY.
The arts environments similar to Pasaquan which have disintegrated and or been vandalized had no community to protect the sites. Pasaquan is fortunate to have people willing to give their time to preserve it.
I'm not sure exactly how we become a community of Pasaquoians, but it is easy to join the Pasaquan Preservation Society to help keep it open to the public.
(I am posting the comments below from the wise and wonderful Mr. Lightsey, of South Georgia. – Cindy)
Samuel Tully Lightsey
June 10 at 5:36pm
In an attempt to form one reply to Cindys opening paragraph and keep some heat under the boiler I would like to open with a small aside to be considered.
The Artist use of hers/his form of graphic communication introducing and describing the piece of work will premeate all further communication relating to the piece [ including bombasity ].
Before I turn a piece of my work over to another to describe,r I much prefer to see an example of their work and very much their level of understanding of what I am trying to do.
To return to the topic " Fine Art" there have been a number of articles published recently on this subject. My own conclusion on the subject. If you are trying to produce "Fine Art" as a product then applying a title as such is self defeating. Only time and movement into quality collections will decide such. The other, and to me is the high road , "live the good life, lather yourself with the joys here and now, know you are the very best because you are you and your Grandchildren will have only the very best.
This is a very relevant post for me, because I too am totally self-taught and consider what I produce to be fine art and not [insert whatever word is PC]. But the list of reasons why you consider what you do fine art reminded me of a conversation I had about a month ago with a potter of considerable talent. In a local art guild meeting, someone touched on the distinction between "art" and "craft" and he became hot under the collar. He said what he did was NOT art, it was CRAFT, and he gave the same reasons you listed. He claimed that attention to materials and careful production were the sole milieu of the craftsperson. I was totally taken aback by his comments and his seeming lack of respect for "artists". I think he had reversed the labels for his own peace of mind, but he certainly had a point that craft and crap aren't interchangeable. Just another interesting point of view I thought you might like to hear.
Yes Cindy, I really agree with you. It will be easy for the established artists to be particular about the quality of the materials they use; but for the new comers,especially the ones who have to make a living out of art, it will be a bit difficult…then it is a vicious circle…It is imperative that the artists use good quality material.
May I request you (if you have time), to vist my blog at agrufus.wordpress.com and give your opinion about my drawings and paintings
Wow! Excellent topic and comments!
Very close to my heart as drop out student/self taught been using all sorts of ‘crap’ for years! Even tried the re-cycled ‘art’ approach until someone rang me at 1am in the morning and said they wanted to burn my cardboard pictures (ha ha ha!) ; I think I’ve seen the light! ;0)
Anyways, using whatever I’ve had on hand has indeed been part and parcel of my learning and unfolding, and I generally end up burning whatever has outlived it’s relevence until the last couple of years when I’ve naturally started to gravitate toward quality over quantity. I find the more I invest in my materials now, the more real value they take on, in every sense…even the experience is different, you know, the fine flexible brush over the scrubby shot one!!!!
So here’s to the true craftmanship of fine art!!!
…did you see what I did there!???
he he…
:0)