Am I an Artist? Are you an Artist?

I am not sure if I can say I’m an Artist, however I would like to think I should never stop aspiring to be one. Where is an Artist without feeling? If the relation of an intention, through a medium, cannot be felt by at most one person--where is that intention and what good has it done? An Artist to me exists devoted to the striving to invoke or evoke feeling from within a person or from within a static ‘thing’. By whichever means the Artist chooses, his driving purpose is that feeling—from within him or herself, unto the observer. How is a film different from a painting as different from say the feeling of love? When you see a film, when you look at a painting, or when you see glittering whites from squinted eyes and the flash of happiness from within a smile-all from the person you care about—what says to us “masterpiece” or what drives us to seek that medium or event out again? The feeling from it. These feelings are what I get from some of my favorite films. I should only humbly think, and wish, to be able to do the same for someone else. To have the capability of this magnitude—reaching out to someone through a depiction on a screen, is at first thought: impossible. However it would be an impossibility I would like to try and reach. If someone seeks films to find experiences or feelings that may lie dormant within them, then the job of quenching that desire as a life-trade or duty is as priceless as the water from within our springs. I seek to use filmmaking for that purpose.

In TCF 312 I feel the teacher is the first passionate person I have come across in this school with regards to filmmaking and student’s individuality. I think that a mentor of that magnitude can only help, not impede, artistic growth; from which I think we can all spread our legs so to speak. Growth comes from freedom not restriction, and I believe we can only go where we lead ourselves as a result.