Can Anyone Experience Contemporary Art?

Art these days comes in many varieties. Personally I find all of them fascinating and greatly enjoy other peoples art. Even when you personally do not like the art you are viewing, that does not needlessly mean that you have no appreciation for the work that was involved.

Being a contemporary artist I realise that it gives you the creative license to express your inner emotions. On a bad day my paintings may appear more dramatic. But then I am also able to paint something that will soothe my spirit.

Art is a very personal thing, what appeals to one person, others hate - the appeal is in the eye of the beholder. These days there so many things classified as art which makes it more satisfying. As an example take spray painting, some people do this but also use stencils. Myself I often really admire some of the spray gun graffiti scene. Very clever youngsters do some amazing creations. Although many people would view this as vandalism.

Another great example are the various artist plying their skills in the Montmatre district of Paris. To everyones amazement the pavement artist sketch out their paintings on the floor or the art students who set up their easels in the street trying to make a little extra money by drawing caricatures. No doubt then that we are talking about talent here.

Perhaps a little different are sand sculptures. They are very popular in the Canary Islands and probably in other parts of the world as well. The scenes feature anything imaginable from biblical to dragons which have real fire breathing out of their nostrils. And believe it or not, there is another form of art that a great many of us have at home or in our gardens. Mosaics - on plant pots, walls, floors and so on.

And then there are things that surround us every day. Take posters for example. They are a wonderful challenge for children who are encouraged to create posters for a big variety of things form protecting the environment to road safety. And what could a very special individual do with driftwood that was collected along the beach? This I would really like to see.

Paperweights are an every day object which no one spends to much time thinking about. Yet they too can be wonderful subjects of art. When one takes a few collected pebbles, cleans, paints and varnishes them they certainly take on a life of their own. And of course the simple collecting of them, feeling the texture of the rock in your hand, provides great satisfaction to many of us.

A great individual gift and form of art is designing and creating your own cards. Most people do this as they know the joy it will give to its eventual recipient. And when I see the things that some artist achieve by working with papermache I am truly amazed. Other things that are getting very popular these days are needlepoint, felting, patch working and scrapbooking.

With so many different forms of art surrounding us there surely has to be something for anyone. And if you really want to get involved and learn more then there are a great many workshops that are being run in art stores or at schools. The satisfaction and enormous joy that art can bring to people is something that can never be measured, at least not in monetary terms - thank God for that.