Am I creating art?

I was blog stalking one of my current inspirations, Toni-Lynn, and one of her posts struck a chord with me. It was about photographers and ‘do we have to be an artist to create beautiful art?’

Who didn’t love art classes in high school? Having free reign over the art room and being able to splash paint around, using different and unusual mediums was always super fun but I definitely wasn’t a natural talent – my art was ho-hum and I knew I wasn’t the next Picasso. And I was happy with that.

I’ve always painted at home too – I love to paint simple, colourful canvases with acrylics. I have paint brushes handed down to me from my Granny and she first introduced me to canvas and acrylics after buying me supplies one Christmas. I know they aren’t fabulous, they would never sell and you can see lots of mistakes if you look too close but sometimes I find a need to paint...so I do. I probably complete one a year and it’s not unusual for a painting to stay unfinished, hanging on my wall for a year until I find the motivation to finish it (there is one on my wall at the moment which people think is finished...but is far from it!).

When I first bought my DSLR though I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to capture what I wanted to and that I wouldn’t be as creative as I wanted to. I had already labelled myself as a logical thinking, typical accountant who had no creative bones in her body – so how on earth was I going to master this creative art!??

I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and have remembered that, yeh, I am creative in a few different ways. Even my Mum asked, ‘why can’t you be good at both?’. She then bought up the fact that I was always drawing (mostly houses and flowers) when I was younger, painting with watercolours, my Derwent’s were one of my most prized childhood possessions (they are still in my cupboard now!), and how I would take her film camera and photograph things around our family farm.

So, that’s it – I’m determined to take myself and photography more seriously and not hold myself back because ‘I’m analytical’. I can be an artist - who is to say I can’t be analytical and creative!

And just because a post is bare without photos - here is the gorgeous Luke, modelling his golf outfit and new (read: bargain, retro) clubs :)