Future Generations
In today’s world, post the tremendous upheaval that recent events have thrust upon our lives and professions, many of us have reevaluated the way we live and work. Decades of how we navigated our lives were well-ingrained and, in some ways, on autopilot. Most of us approached life, education, and career paths in similar patterns established by our parents and even our grandparents.
Among the somewhat recent changes that have been embraced by young people is how they seek and receive their educations. In the United States, experts say that homeschooling has been on a steady rise, increasing by 10% since 2016. University enrollments in the United States have been in steep decline for more than a decade, and only in the fall of 2022 did higher education begin to see some slowdown in this trend.
For young artists, some sobering statistics were reported by the Foundation for Economic Education in 2018: Fine Arts Degrees ranked last of 162 different majors and their unemployment rate of 7.7% was triple the national average. High school dropouts are more likely to get a job than art majors! Of an estimated two million art graduates, only 10% make their living as working artists. Many take out tens of thousands of dollars in debt, only to find they cannot pursue their dream of making a living as an artist. Lest you lose all hope, it’s much worse in the sports world! With all the time and money that is poured into youth sports, many parents living with the dream that their kid just might be the next Tom Brady, only 0.00075% of high school athletes make it to the pros each year! The odds are about the same as getting struck by lightning sometime in your life. At least our chances of becoming working artists beats that stat!
This is not to say that there are not still fine higher education programs available and worthwhile. I obtained an art and marketing degree from a university and then also sought further education from workshops and a close artist mentor. Even John Singer Sargent had one foot in established education in Paris in the L'Ecole des Beaux Arts and one foot in the studios of Carolus-Duran. However, students have to seek hard to find the right match both in the university curriculum offered and the cost associated with the pursuit. As a result, many art students have chosen alternative ways to educate themselves. Thankfully, professional artists have opened their studios to train small groups of students as well as offer one-on-one mentoring, with an eye on practical skills that can be applied to creating art that both pleases the artist’s own vision and is pleasing to collectors. As is often not always understood by many artists and teachers today, Pablo Picasso actually believed his work would be purchased and hung on someone’s wall to be enjoyed with their morning cup of coffee!
Last week my daughter, Mattie Ree Neal, and her friend, Stephanie Thomson, spent several days together in New York. Both are young, talented, and aspiring artists with a passion for learning. Each has been engaged for several years in self-training, choosing their own educational paths. In shaping their own curriculums, they have traveled the world studying with artists in their studios, taking workshops, working in life classes, and seeking the direction of seasoned, professional artists as mentors. Mattie and Stephanie have found receptive leaders in their fields who have generously shared their knowledge and time. While in New York together, they studied the work of historical artists on the walls of museums and found these past masters poured out information, some of which will be applied immediately to their own work and some of which will marinate for months to come. The depth and breadth of the work opened their eyes to the possibilities of combining craft and imagination to create paintings, drawings, and sculptures. They also found time to paint and draw together as well as enroll in a life drawing class held each week in my studio building.
As I look at the work today produced by young artists, whether taught in a university setting or through independent self-education, I am encouraged and inspired. At the Portrait Society, we have seen a tremendous growth in both the quality and quantity of young artists who produce work that any generation would love to claim as their own. Through programs offered by the PSoA, we are an integral part of providing affordable educational resources and access to professional artists that can assist them in growing their skills, whether they are studying at a traditional university or in alternative settings. As you can see with our recent award winners in the Future Generations competition, the future is bright indeed!
