Self taught artists can really bring a new approach to their creative expression. If you didn’t study someone else’s method, you create your own method. We’re all influenced by things we have seen, and inspired by what someone else has done. For some of us, this can be the source of anxiety on some level. We doubt ourselves, and tend to judge our own work on what others have made. Even if we don’t critique our work harshly, someone else will. It’s what people do. I can learn a lot from other people, even if I don’t want my art to look like theirs. I can glean some technique that will solve a problem or enhance my practice, incorporating that skill into my visual vocabulary.

Art school was a brief time in my life, and I remember very little of what was said to me there. Besides, my walls were up. I felt intimidated in those days. I documented a few exchanges that entertain, if not guide me to this day. They were not about technique, but about expression… about those walls. My approach to life was rigid. I judged everything and everybody. Someone must have marched around me with shofars because now I only find pieces in the rubble.