I started doing art in high school, well I guess I started even earlier than that. I had a How to Draw book filled with all different sorts on animals. I remember picking an animal and sketching it, spending hours on the one drawing. My dad was a good drawer, well still is I guess. I still love seeing him draw his little cartoon animals and people. That is something that I will always remember…
As the years went on and I moved through school I always loved art! I did however have this belief that to be ‘good’ at art you have to draw a person perfectly or paint a piece like a ‘real’ artist. I was so lucky to have an incredible art teacher from year 7 to 10 - Inel Date. Her knowledge, sharing of her skills and patience will always stay with me. I stopped doing art after year 10 as I didn’t think I was good enough (that old chestnut ahah). Fast forward maybe to just before COVID and I was lucky enough to do an elective at uni that was called Drawing and Painting.
This course changed it all… I had to go and find a long stick, tape a pencil to the end of it and then use it to draw using my left hand. This was only one of the practices we did over the semester long course. It opened my eyes to the fact that 1. Art is so subjective, everyone sees each piece so differently and 2. Anything is art, art is an expression of yourself, the world around you and experiences you have had. My lecturer said at the start of the course “Anyone can do art, you can all do art and so can the next bloke to walk through those doors.”
My eyes were open and from there josetteART began.
From then I have sold pieces across Australia, had three exhibitions- one in a gallery in Newcastle, donated pieces for charity auction, multiple show cases in stores and cafes and just recently I have started to run my own workshops with people aged from 2 years old to late 60s maybe even 70s. The amount of times that I have said the words “anyone can do art” is wild. It is so interesting to run a workshop. I will show people the piece that we will be creating and I will always hear people say “I will not be able to do that”, “Just you wait mine will look so bad”. Then I come in with the line “No, no don’t say that, you can all do art! You will all create a piece that you love! I promise.” It is a cycle and sure enough as the workshop goes on people are always amazed by the final product, by how much their piece has grown and how in fact they can do art!
I have thought about this a lot and I think that there is so much around telling us that is right and wrong. We become so focus on ticking boxes and doing the right thing that we become tapped out of our creative flow. That sense of play. Picking up anything and just having a go. It has been so refreshing teaching younger children or I guess just watching them to art. They don’t have that fear, they have pure exploration and experimentation. They are not attached to the outcome, they are more involved in the process - so in the moment.
Every time I teaching a class I am amazed; I think I learn more from my students than I teach them. I am constantly inspired by the styles that they don’t know they intuitively have, the bravery it takes to try something new and always the joy when they finish their own piece. It is addictive.
So… anyone CAN do art! Art is an expression of yourself in another form. There is not right and there is no wrong. It is all a form or creation, something new in the world - that is special.
