by There is a particular stereotype of creative genius: that of the young prodigy of irrepressible talent. Unlike a surgeon or a politician, the artist is not expected to accumulate years of knowledge and experience before taking on the role. You could say that one does not become an artist but is born.
However, history offers many counterexamples. The French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau worked as a tax and toll collector until he picked up a paintbrush when he was 40 years old. Alfred Wallis, a West Country fisherman, began painting and drawing when he was 70 years old. After his wife died, he began taking photographs of coastal and sea life, mainly on pieces of cardboard, “for company,” he once said. American folk artist Grandma Moses, a housekeeper turned farmer, began producing her New England landscapes at age 76; Her work became so popular that in December 1953, at the age of 93, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
These latecomers are often described as “naïve” or “outsider” artists, somewhat condescending terms used to describe people without formal artistic training. But they have also been recognized for the originality and virtuosity of their work, demonstrating that, at any stage, new beginnings are always possible.
Of course, depending on each person’s circumstances, there will be different paths to starting over and succeeding – that is, earning money and recognition – as an artist. London-based Libby Heaney, whose Heartbreak and Magic exhibition opens at Somerset House in February, tells me that art was her favorite subject at school. “But because I come from a very working class background, my teachers and family advised me to study something at university that they considered ‘more serious’, which was theoretical physics with German,” she says. Heaney quickly doubted her choice but she didn’t have the funds to start over. So she decided to specialize in quantum physics, pursuing a PhD followed by five years of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. She continued making art in her free time, although she considered it more of a personally enriching “hobby,” like “yoga or clubbing.”
I come from a very working family and my teachers and my family advised me to study something more serious.
Libby Heaney
As a quantum physicist, Heaney has received awards and published some 20 articles in international peer-reviewed journals. But throughout this period he was also “slowly saving enough money to go back to university to study art.”
In 2015, when he was in his early 30s, Heaney graduated with a master’s degree in Arts and Sciences from Central Saint Martins in London. Two years later she had her first solo exhibition at a gallery in Aarhus, Denmark. In her current artistic practice, Heaney draws on tools and concepts from her scientific research. For example, she uses her own quantum computing code to alter and animate digital images of her watercolor paintings. The years Heaney spent in science while saving for art school, then, were by no means a waste.
But Heaney is cautious about presenting her story as a blueprint for success. “The ability of working-class people to take risks, whether by attending art school [where an aspiring artist crucially discovers peers and mentors and develops their credentials], or doing work that is less marketable, is much lower compared to people who have financial support, such as family wealth,” he says. “How feasible is it for other working-class people to take an indirect path to the arts to mitigate financial risks?”
Others take a more spontaneous approach. Arjan de Nooy, who lives and works in The Hague, is an award-winning photographer and bookrunner; This year he saw the publication of his photobook Photology of Him. At university in the 1980s, de Nooy studied chemistry and art history. He was already dabbling in photography but ended up graduating with a master’s degree and then a doctorate in chemistry. While working in a patent office, his interest in artistic creation grew. He was in his early 30s when he made the impulsive decision to enroll in the photography program at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2004. “This was a decision that was made more out of curiosity than out of a conscious plan to become into a professional artist. “He tells me. “What I was most interested in was meeting like-minded people, since I had little knowledge of the ‘art world’.”
De Nooy graduated in 2009. Like Heaney, he found that his scientific training has enriched his approach to art-making. “I’ve always felt that there isn’t much difference between the way I worked as an organic chemist and as a photographer,” he says. “I tend to combine existing information to obtain new information.” In his books and exhibitions, he makes extensive use of “found photography” (he has amassed a vast collection of historical photographs) and collage.
Now, a decade and a half into his photography career, De Nooy agrees with Heaney that lack of financial resources is the biggest obstacle for most artists, and not just in terms of having funds for university. “I know very few artists, if any, who can make a living solely from their own work,” he says. To advance your career, he says, you need a combination of skill and serendipity: meeting the right people at the right time and winning awards or receiving grants. “If you are able to write a solid grant application, that is also a plus,” she adds.
But sometimes the barriers are both psychological and practical. Making creative work and showing it to the world is an intensely vulnerable experience. Helen Downie, a London artist, produces works of hers under the name Unskilled Worker – in reference to her lack of formal artistic training – and she did not complete her first painting of herself as an adult until she was 48. “When she was a child she knew she was an artist, but somehow along the way she had forgotten,” she says. At one point she considered enrolling at Epsom University of Creative Arts, but she did not do so. “My life became quite chaotic and it wasn’t until I was 48 that things suddenly calmed down and there was space in my mind to start.”
In 2013, Downie uploaded to Instagram an image of the first painting she painted as an adult, a portrait of a woman with dark hair, big red lips, and almond eyes, at the suggestion of a friend of her son. Then, she says, “once I started, I couldn’t stop.” Her following grew and, after two years, her boldly colored and expressive portraits caught the attention of the fashion and art worlds. She was hired by fashion photographer Nick Knight to produce illustrations for her website. Since then, her commissions have increased for companies such as Gucci and Vogue, as well as exhibitions in museums and art galleries.
“There will always be plenty of reasons not to start,” Downie says. “The conditions are not perfect: there is no space; there is no time; I left it too late. The basis of all of them is fear.” But once you start working, he found that it’s much easier to maintain the creative momentum. Another strategy is to not take yourself too seriously, lest the fear return. “I trick myself into not giving importance to what I’m doing. I tell myself, ‘I’m just playing, I’m just playing.’‘“
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It is noteworthy that each of these artists knew what they wanted to do when they were young. In order to reorient themselves into adulthood, they had to find a way to stop being adults, whether by going back to school or simply allowing themselves to play without inhibitions. Maybe this is good advice for all of us. Artist Grayson Perry, who invited everyone in the country to try their hand at art-making through his hit television series Grayson’s Art Club, agrees. “The biggest obstacles to being creative are the fear of making mistakes and the inability to trust intuition,” he tells me. “Just do it and keep going – no one makes a masterpiece on the first try.”
