Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Groucho Marx

It is interesting to me that as we grow older and know what we know, taking classes from younger artists is not the best thing to do.  It is my humble opinion that younger artists want to teach us their style and when we, as older artists do not want to appreciate and learn their style they do not understand our style.  “Does that make sense” is a phrase I heard more than I ever want to hear in the last three days.

That said, I think that maybe Groucho knows more about producing art than a lot of our younger generation.  OMG I have said something that might cause conflict.

This weekend I took a class, which I walked out of on Sunday and then Monday I took a class that I left early. It finally dawned on me that the teachers were selling their art, but I did not respect what they did, so how could I learn from someone I did not really respect.  It is one thing to sell your art and another teach  “good” art.  Teachers should teach you to think about what you are doing, not quickly judge what you are doing and put it down. Maybe the lesson in this is to look at the art your proposed teachers are selling and see if you really love it.  If you do not, or think it is trite or bad color or to “sell” only rather than to design something that years from this year will be respected, then you should not take the class.

In my case, in most classes I have taken I am one of the most successful in the class, so when I am one of the least successful in the class to what do I attribute that failure?