The European vs Australian Art Divide 'When Did We Stop Expecting High-Level Skill from Artists?'

To introduce this article, I want to tell you how I started out as a self-taught artist, just a girl following YouTube videos, buying cheap materials from $2 shops and practicing endlessly in the hope of improving. One of the first things I ever tried to paint in watercolour was macarons. They failed terribly.

I cried and genuinely thought, at 18 years old, that my art career was already over because I was never going to be able to paint well.

But with rigorous effort, and the mindset of an athlete, I decided that if I worked hard enough, one day I would be able to paint my ideas in oils and achieve a level of representation to carry beauty and story.

When I re-enrolled in university in Australia, I quickly realised that technical skill was not prioritised within the discipline of painting. There was far more focus on concepts, intellectual frameworks and political commentary than on the actual craft of painting. So, for four years, my mind was shaped by an intellectual approach to art and by studying art history, until I could save up to attend a European art school for formal oil painting training.

That is what I did, and this is what I realised about the European versus Australian art world;

In European schools, students’ work can lack personality, style and begin to look the same. There is rigorous technical training, discipline and a very high standard of making, but sometimes individuality disappears inside tradition.

In Australian schools, art students are often encouraged to explore materiality and concept with very little technical training. There is freedom and expression, but often without the practical skills needed to fully bring ideas to life.

Somewhere in between is the sweet spot.

If you are a self-taught artist, I think it is still important to first learn technique.

Learn how to draw, paint, compose, observe, and make things properly. Build practical skills through discipline and hard work.

As Picasso said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

And then you can express from life experience. Challenge your mind; read, live, remember, feel, speak to strangers and place yourself in uncomfortable spaces, both within yourself and within the world, that you would never usually enter. Listen to bands you would never normally listen to. Meet people you assume are your opposite.

From that place, ideas come and seek a body for you to give them through the artwork.

Even ideas that are truthful, ugly, or confronting can be expressed through technique, discipline and beauty - skills you have spent years building and developing.

I think people in the art world assume that when I defend traditional art, I’m asking artists to all paint to European standards or follow elitist ideals with little room for personal style. That is not what I am defending.

I am defending the idea that artists should still desire to improve their practical art-making skills in order to birth good, truthful and beautiful images that actually leave people breathless.

Artists should train like athletes. Excellence and beauty are still as important as the message communicated in the work.

Can the European and Australian art worlds meet somewhere in the middle?

Grace xx