I have always put the artists on a higher pedestal than us, enjoyed their paintings, sculptures and even their absurd installations, videos and the shapes that they do to make us understand the world, or at least see it from their perspective which is at the end of the day a better perspective. I have visited exhibits around the world, art shows and galleries that promote art and think of making a living out of the artists.

When Wikipedia designed Wikiart I think I am the only one that had downloaded the app on my phone.  I imagined a directory of all the artists in the world, as there are many of them not just the most famous 200 that are listed by Wikiart.

Artists have different types of “Feelings”, they see the world in a different way, they see the “GOOD” in every little thing that we do not even notice in our everyday lives. The artists provide us with a fresh “Outlook to the world” they make us see the world from a different perspective. Us, the general public, continue with our daily routines without noticing the beauty of the world around us, and then comes the artist and finds a great perspective, and splash colors on a canvas, then we look at that and our lives are different after that, the colors change our moods and stir different emotions.

In a way Artists do something unusual by Letting others know what is going on in your mind, they read us, they are the magicians that can make you smile, and at times the reasons you just walk a thousand miles to reach a museum just to see what these artists have in store for us to feast our eyes on.

Extrapolating your thoughts to the world is the quality that artists possess, think of a story or a novel, the writers have to write many paragraphs to give us the story, artist in other hands can do that with a splash or few strokes from a brush or just a hand gesture.  You look at that art and think, what a story. Once I saw a sculpture in Cork where the Titanic had berthed, the look on that woman’s eyes said it all, told a story of families that wanted to move for a better life and told the story of the miseries that the people were living under prior to making the decision of moving on.

I feel teaching art can be an intense career, the art teacher must be an artist as without that outlook, how can she/he teach the students the techniques? And also convert their thoughts into an art piece. In my 15 years in education, I have encountered many students who wanted to study art and believe me, it was one of the most difficult majors to get into.  The requirements are so hard because the student had to put some thoughts on the choice of art pieces that he or she must post on their portfolio, something that our schools, unfortunately, do not teach.

The art subject in our schools is confiscated by the other teachers, as most teachers think that it’s not necessary when it can change people’s minds to be better people. Did you know that STEM (science, technology, engineering and Math) had now become STEAM (the A is for Art) as the world had realized that it is as important as the other majors?

To all of you who love to paint, sculpt, or mould I say splash, swish and squish away as YOU can change the world with art.