The 'Talent' debate

I recently had a discussion about the idea that some people will never be artists because they lack any artistic talent, my answer to this is based mainly on the fact I KNOW I have no artistic talent, but I've spent an awful lot of time working hard, and I believe hard work is the answer, not any inherited ability.

I'm still not convinced 'talent' exists... you can learn to do pretty much anything IF you are passionate enough about it to put the hard work in, the thing is, if it doesn't come easy straight away many people decide they can't do it and give up before they even start. I've had plenty of people come to me and say "I wish I had your talent" and when I reply "It's not talent, it's hard work, you could be an artist if you wanted to" they reply "I guess I'm really not that interested in art to spend the kind of time it takes."

Yes fine motor control is a benefit for drawing, but there are more large scale forms of art you can do without having that, and creativity can be taught. Unless you have an actual disability, fine motor control can be trained. There are artists who paint with their feet, or their mouths, really, there are no excuses there to be had.

A lot of people who make zero progress in art and then claim not to be 'talented' as a reason, simply just never actually put any time into it. There is a vast difference between drawing when you feel like it - and going days or even weeks before drawing, and studying 6+ hours a day, actively seeking knowledge and working hard on improving. Like anything, if you do the same stuff all the time you'll get the same results - to get good at art you not only need to do lots of art, you need to be trying to get better via tutorials/ gained knowledge.

Everyone learns at a different pace so it can take some people much longer to see progress, and some people find after sinking x number of hours into it, they just don't enjoy it, but I think you'll find the really good artists out there have put in the hours to get there, rather than having any special ability.

I've had the "Mozart child prodigy" thing thrown at me in response to this, but his father was a composer and taught music, his sister was learning, his entire family was in the music business and he was exposed to the teaching at a very young age, the fact he was also interested and passionate about it was the clincher - access and passion, not 'unnatural talent'. You can teach preschool children to play the violin - the Suzuki method, so it's not unreasonable for a child growing up in a family where the father was a teacher of music and was teaching his older sister to pick up more than your average child in a non musical family would.

There are always outliers, but they are a minority, and I feel that talent is used as an excuse for giving up too often "I can't do x because I have no talent for it'. I just feel the word 'talent' doesn't help anyone, and raises barriers where there shouldn't be any. Yes there are physical attributes which will make one person better at long distance running than another, but they also have to have the urge to follow that path, and someone whose bodyshape isn't ideal but has the passion will do better than someone with the more compatible body type but no passion.

We can't all be the next Rembrandt, the world would be a boring place if we could, but I honestly don't think it's talent, just circumstance, passion and a willingness to keep learning. Remember most of the 'masters' were apprenticed at a young age and didn't create their most famous works until they had been doing art for a good ten years at least (usually not until they were much older).

If you want to do something, don't let an idea that lack of talent is something that can stop you, passion beats 'talent' any day!

---

This is my intro post to the Steemit community, I'm a self taught artist with work in a gallery local to me and a couple of picture books published (as the illustrator). I'd like to spend my time on Steemit talking about the art process, the struggles self taught artists face, and hopefully busting some misconceptions about the art process. I'm not putting myself out there as as great artist, but as a person who can help others on the learning journey, and someone who enjoys sharing the the resources and tricks I've learnt so far.