#i have to write an artist statement for class due tomorrow. can you tell im fighting for my life out here

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ive been a little frustrated in these latter years of my fine arts major because theres this weird... contradiction? discrepancy? something like that...

but like i've got like only two modes of making art really: 1) fuck around mode and 2) drawing my ocs like im a 10 year old on deviantart in 2008 mode AND LIKE okay Fuck Around Mode is just like. trying weird techniques for the sake of trying weird techniques - its very fun and i learn a lot that can be incorporated into the second mode and i mean i like the things i make in Fuck Around Mode they're nice and neat but like. theres no passion behind it except for THE PASSION OF THE GAME..... you know? im just playing ball with that art, i don't think all that much about my Fuck Around Mode pieces after im done making them until i need something for a portfolio or something LOL and to be honest i dont put all that much effort into it.....

but that leads into my '08 OC Mode where i do, in fact, pour my entire heart and soul in making images and pieces of art..... of just like an edgy angel oc or something. i do include techniques from Fuck Around Mode so they often get pretty interesting! but the subject of the piece is no longer "I Don't Really Care I Just Want To see What Happens If I Do This" and is instead. an anime boy i made up when i was 19. and i really do love the work i make in this mode, it means so much to me truly

but this is where the discrepancy i havent been able to grapple with quite yet comes in: to the IRL layman and to the citizens of the internet, both professional artists and otherwise, my '08 OC Mode is pretty strongly engaged with compared to any Fuck Around Mode stuff i put out there, even if people dont like it they take it seriously and earnestly you know!! but the second i step into school its the opposite - my teachers and peers seem to adore the Fuck Around pieces and many Do Not give a shit about the rest until i really push em to actually look at them.... its kind of bizarre.

i like getting critiques and i like when people interpret my art in whatever ways but its a bit frustrating when instead of giving useful advice on what to improve technically or compositionally or whatever i just get people ascribing passion and personal intent at art where there is very little.

where was that post of the comic where someones showing their art with all their heart and the other person says "this lacks truth" and the first person beats them up. i do feel a little like that LOL

i know not everything i make will always be effective at conveying the personal truths i put in to them, and effort put in does not have to equal an audience resonating with a piece: 2 minute doodle getting a million views and a 4 hour painting getting like 3 max online is a tale as old as time after all and i never minded it LOL i kind of post art on the internet using the same method as the wonderful ms paint fetish artist on deviantart who has been posting for 15 years without fail -> just keep posting what i do and what i like whenever i feel like it and whoever is interested will find me sooner or later <3

but it is a different feeling getting the IRL academic equivalent of this...... maybe its just the way the community in my faculty has been shifting? I've noticed there is like, an assumption, a bit among my undergraduate peers but mostly among professors and graduate students, that the reason one makes art is because they have something specific, clear, and pointed to tell the world. i do not make art because of that. i make art because i need to get it out of me.

i like it if a viewer can get something out of it, anything, whatever it is. im a big loud alien beast of a person like everyone else, desperate for connection and understanding only to be stopped by the barriers between molecules and atoms and everything as usual. but still i cannot make art with the intention to connect with others, with the express goal and desire to understand and converse and comprehend. i can only draw a cartoon character shoulders up facing three-quarters to the left.