Leaders are not afraid to help others learn to lead and they aren’t afraid of grooming their replacements. It is no secret that realm of handmade creative work regardless of the end product is experiencing a shift both in the process of making and the process of consuming. As art and creative work becomes increasingly crowd sourced the concept of mastery is being threatened for any number of reasons not the least of which is education and mentorship.
Each of the artists featured here has made efforts to develop emerging artists through whatever ways work best, whether through teaching, lending a hand with a newcomer on Etsy or other on line venues or just making friends with somebody new to the scene. One of the important traits of a leader is their security in the uniqueness of their work and their knowledge that while technique may be copied style and vision cannot be. Possession of this spirit of security frees up a leader to freely share and develop her replacement by instilling the same security and supporting a new artists growth as she finds her voice.
Hence, the reason behind this final part of my interview with each featured artist.
Are you helping other artists, especially emerging artists, develop their voice?
In as much as I can. If someone writes to me asking for help and advice, whether it be about art, marketing, promotion etc, then I will always help as much as I can. I am part of a team of writers for a project called UK Handmade (www.ukhandmade.co.uk), which is an online magazine dedicated to profiling the work of UK based artists and crafters. This project is very important to me, and I feel very proud to be part of this venture. It has been going for a year now and we are in the process of working on the Spring edition.
When I was active on deviantART I would help artists by developing tutorials and for a while was a Traditional Art Gallery Director, and would offer advice when applied to about painting and drawing.
However, I would say that the advice for which I have been mostly asked, has been about web design and coding, specifically CSS for instance. As I said, not a lot of artists have web design skills and this is something I have been able to help a lot of people with, which I am always happy to do.
I am a firm believer in ‘share the knowledge’. I have come across many artists and designers who just cannot be bothered, or who are reluctant to help out other artists, because either elitism and snobbery, or for no other reason than there was nothing in it for them, and they can’t be bothered to make the time. I hate this kind of indifference and selfishness.
If you could pass on one gem of wisdom to other artists, what would it be?
Self belief. Do it for yourself, and not for others. Create art that pleases you and try not o get caught up in the elitism that predominates the art world, or sucked into the pseudo intellectualism and esotericism propounded by art critics and ‘experts’.
