The guidelines for creating art only get stricter as we get older, and dictating what is or isn’t art can be costly for everyone.
As young children, our creativity and curiosity knew no bounds. Not only were we continuously encouraged to question everything in our environments, but we were also pushed to create; we were given the opportunity to draw anywhere our hearts desire, with an amount of crayons, colored pencils and markers any professional artist would have to spend a fortune to get.
As we get older, we begin to be limited by what we’re allowed to make; in order to make art accepted by our peers, we now have to follow certain rules. At this stage, it’s only appropriate to color within the lines, and making the sky purple is now an unfathomable crime that requires being punished. Gone are the days of scribbling the ideas bursting in our tiny heads, because making art now has criteria it needs to fulfill.
In middle school, the divide between “art” and something that we came up with in our free time only gets bigger; everyone has to follow the same directions of an art project that’s been reused for decades to a T, or risk getting an F because we strayed too far from the directions. Every stroke of the paintbrush needs purpose — everything must be intentional and must be well thought out.
Soon after the coveted formative years of our lives, comes the required high school art credit that everyone either completes their first year or waits until the very last minute to get done. This happens for a couple of reasons: people want to get something they find boring over with, people are endless procrastinators, people want to jump right into something they love or people just stop caring about something they can never be themselves in. Is it even realistic to expect someone to want to create anymore, when anything they ever create is judged by a rubric?
What’s even more terrifying is that by the time college rolls around, the number of people who enthusiastically show up for an art class seems to get smaller and smaller. On top of art being such a critique-filled field, pursuing art just isn’t “realistic” anymore. Who in their right mind would willingly want to participate in something that seemingly adds “nothing” to their lives?
That moment — the contemplation between giving up art forever and pursuing a degree for the sole purpose of a high-paying job — is when we need to stop. That’s the moment when we need to go back and think of the little kid who was excited for everything — that little kid who couldn’t wait to create something new. When we give up on expressing ourselves through art, we give up not only on the child who would do anything for another sheet of paper, but the adult who has lost the ability to see the world in color. That’s just not something humanity can afford to lose.
August Humphrey is a first-year undecided student at Miami, minoring in German. When she’s not studying, you’ll most likely find her at home in bed with her cat.
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