“You Look Like an Art Teacher”

“Wherever your passion lies, there you shall create.”

-Unknown

Last month, I wore this outfit on a thrifting adventure. I was digging through the secondhand scarves (because I can never have too many scarves) which hang just below the preloved hats when two young women in their early 20s approached and one started trying on hats. She was unsure of a messenger cap that she put on her head and was asking her shopping mate for her opinion. The hat was so ridiculously adorable on her that I couldn’t help myself and I chimed in to let her know just how cute the hat looked on her.

She acknowledged my input by enthusiastically responding, “Oh my God, I love your outfit! You look like an art teacher. I mean that in the best possible way.” Then she bought that sweet hat for herself!

While I am definitely not an art teacher, I loved the compliment because I am an art lover, as you probably already know. As a creative person, my favorite artistic outlet is fashion. I view every ensemble as a work of art that requires time, patience, and an creative eye that sees things just a little bit differently.

This outfit is certainly one of my more subdued looks, but I am so appreciative that someone could still see the art in it. It’s a muted combination of blues and creams with a pair of old lightweight chambray trousers, a new cream tee shirt, and a teal kimono shirt. I accessorized with my hand-painted fedora, my dark brown Furkenstocks, my teal key necklace, a newly thrifted glass bead necklace, a flea market fabric ring necklace, and a pair of preloved beaded hoop earrings.

While shopping in this outfit, I discovered the cute marled sweater vest that worked perfectly as another complementary layer for the outfit I was already wearing!

A few weeks ago, I shared an article called There is a Certain Beauty in Death, which I originally published on Medium back in 2019. Since I’m no longer publishing on that site, I wanted to start moving the content to my blog.

As I went searching through my Medium library for a relevant topic, I found one called 21 Thought-Provoking Quotes About the Power of Art that was published in November 2019. That seems like the prefect topic for an outfit that had me mistaken for an art teacher!

Art is one of those amazing things that anyone and everyone can do. It takes on many forms such as painting, drawing, photography, writing, music, singing, dancing, acting, sewing, crafting, pottery, architecture, digital design, and the list goes on. Art is, at its most basic form, an expression of creativity stemming from human skill and imagination.

Any level of skill will do and any amount of imagination will suffice. We are born into this world to create, to find beauty around us and within us, and to interpret it in ways that move us emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.

Since the beginning of time, humans have been creating art. And we will continue to create until the end of time. It is where we find purpose. It is how we discover meaning in this great big expanse of chaos around us. We search, we seek, we witness, we question, we think, and we dream…and it all leads us to our own special forms of art whatever our preferences may be.

The importance of artistic expression throughout the history of mankind is evidenced by the plethora of powerful quotes on the topic. I am a great lover of quotes. And so I wanted to share 21 of my favorite thought-provoking quotes about the power of art in one place for easy reference. I hope you find them as powerful and inspiring as I do.

1.“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” -Pablo Picasso

2. “Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” -Rainbow Rowell

3. “Every artist was first an amateur.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. “Creativity takes courage.” –Henri Matisse

5. “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” -Stella Adler

6. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” –Pablo Picasso

7. “If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” -Kurt Vonnegut

8. “Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.” -Clive Barker

9. “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” -Emile Zola

10. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” –Edgar Degas

11. “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” -Thomas Merton

12. “We have art in order not to die of the truth.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

13. “When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.” –Pablo Picasso

14. “The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.” -Leonardo da Vinci

15. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett

16. “A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.” -Jorge Luis Borges

17. “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” –Ansel Adams

18. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” –Martha Graham

19. “Art doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.” -Duane Hanson

20. “Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.” -Amy Lowell

21. “If you think your child’s academic studies are more important than the arts, think again.” -Plato

Which art quote is your favorite? Do you view fashion and style as a form of art?

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee