it's all about the perspective.

eons ago, when i was in art school, i used to dread critique days.  after weeks of working on something, we would have to pull it together and get ready to present in front of our class, our professors, and whoever else decided to drift in to listen to us get "critiqued".  i used to feel more like we were on the chopping block.  being branded an "ARTIST" always made me think of pretentious, skinny, pale snobs, smoking cigarettes.  painfully, i wanted to be one just as much as i hated being associated with them.  sometimes, listening to the haughty drivel that some of my classmates came up with made me feel slightly nauseated - seriously, most of the time, i had NO idea about what they were talking about.  it felt like a competition of how many big words people could fit into their 10 minutes of presentation time.  and in the end, i'm not sure it really mattered, because the esthetic usually won out anyways.  (seriously, art school is overrated.)

flash forward to now... i look at art in a totally different way now.  perhaps it is the art therapist part of me, perhaps it is the mellowing that almost inevitably comes with age, but i realize that what is REALLY important in the art of self-expression is the perspective.  the person behind the paintbrush, the pencil, the clay, or the viewfinder is showing the world how they see the world.  (why do you think parents love any and all artwork that their kids do?)  and that in itself gives credence to the art making process.  it is how YOU see things.  where YOU see beauty. and in having the courage to share that perspective with the world, to nudge someone into thinking about things just a little differently, makes it even more beautiful.