Amelia Draws

I don’t like rules around colour, they are very silly.

Red and green should never be seen? Tell that to a rose.

Pink is never to be next to orange? The sunsets seem to manage it.

And no shade on any who use it, but a lot of the rules in colour theory can go get lost behind a couch.

Rules around any form of creativity are generally wrong and unnecessary. They stifle rather then encourage growth. They are pretty much only there to be broken.

I quit chasing my Art degree shortly after I started – so I remain ‘untrained’. This has had its negatives – I was never really taught how to make art. It has also had positives- I was never really taught how to make art.

I was free to not even know what rules there were to break. I just did what felt right. I was able to develop an instinct that was mine and mine alone

We like rules, us humans, we like boundaries.

They help us contain a big world, to frame our place within it. All those rules we live within, from the start to the finish do for the most part help us. But it doesn’t work with art because art is boundless, has no rules and that is scary

Thats ok, because that is also where art sits, within that fear. I am not saying it is fearful. I am saying its fearless. I am saying that as the makers and consumers of art we are brave, we step up to the fear every time we meet

The act of placing what we see and feel to the page takes bravery. Showing work to someone else or to many people takes bravery. Reading a poem outloud takes bravery. Accepting criticism, pushing against power and convention, standing up on a stage all takes bravery.

It also takes bravery to be the audience. To give your attention and be asked to think and feel in return. To be asked the big questions. To be asked what is life? What actually is life?

In even within the very beautiful and calm pieces of art there is the reminder that everything is transient and sitting with this beautiful idea takes bravery. Trusting the artist takes bravery.

No matter what rules or boundaries you try to impose on art, a beautiful human practise so vast it resists every neat label and we still don’t know how to define it. Even if you managed to put a rule on that, its makers will always chase the fear of art and will always be brave and will always ask you to go there with them.