Reflection: classroom discussion on Folk Art

After last night's discussion, I spent sometime thinking about what we had talked about. In all of the folk art I have seen, the artists make the work because they just need to. They did not make art for extrinsic purposes. They were not looking for financial success or looking for outside affirmation. They made their work with confidence and knew that it was something important enough to keep doing.

The main difference I see in outsider/folk art than trained artists is that outsider artists make art from their soul. They have skipped the intellectual analysis and know that what they're making transcends itself beyond human consciousness. I feel that today, especially in art school, professors are training art students to use their mind before their soul. This is a problem I have with contemporary art that only stimulates the brain. What does this mean? Why did they choose to do that this way? Everything is thought out to a T and the artist can tell you exactly what he did and why. When this happens I feel like the artist knows how to write and speak very articulately about their work but usually the visual component is lacking.

In folk art the work is mostly about the visual component. You usually don't have an artist statement(written by the artist) to know their original intentions, however, in folk art the personal history of the artist often plays a large role. The artists are not the ones to talk about themselves and they many times become known after they die and others feel as if they need to tell about the artists troubled life to validate their art. Personally I feel that most folk art does stand on its own without the personal narrative of the artist. After reflecting on artists through past it's not folk art only who have tied their art so closely to their personal lives. Examples are Van Gogh, Francis Bacon, and Michaelangelo.

I think that because artists and creative people tend to be eccentric, people on the outside are always trying to link personal lives of the artist to their work whether its appropriate or not. This is because art is so emotional and personal that how can you not tie it back to the creator wonder where did he get these inspirations, conceptual material and this is why people always keep folk art so tied to the artist personal history..... because its INTERESTING.