A MANIFESTO — I AM NOT AN ARTIST

I want freedom.

I do not believe art belongs only in museums, galleries, institutions and the homes of those wealthy enough to afford it. Nor do I accept that a small circle of critics, curators and collectors should decide what deserves to be called art.

Art is older than all of them. Before there were museums, there were walls. We painted caves. We made images of animals, spirits, fears and dreams because something inside us demanded to become visible. We told stories long before there was an art world to tell us whether they mattered.

Art is a universal language.

Put two people from opposite sides of the world in the same room. They may share no language, no culture, no religion and no history, yet the same piece of music can move them both. They can laugh at the same melody. They can cry at the same song.

An image can do the same.

That is the extraordinary power of art. It is one of the few languages we all share. It can reach across everything that divides us and touch something fundamentally human. It can make us feel another person’s grief, recognize their joy, understand their fear or see the world, if only for a moment, through someone else’s eyes.

Art creates empathy.

It reminds us that beneath all our differences, we are capable of being moved by the same things.

That is where art has its power: not in separating us by what we know, but in connecting us through what we feel.

But somewhere along the way, visual art lost some of that universality. We took it away from ordinary life. We put it behind white walls, buried it under complicated language, attached enormous price tags to it and surrounded it with gatekeepers who told people what mattered, what was important and even what deserved to be called art.

I am bored with that.

I am bored with trends pretending to be revolutions. I am bored with art more concerned with impressing the art world than touching the human being standing in front of it. I am bored with exclusivity being mistaken for importance.

I want art that moves people.

I want a picture that haunts a child’s imagination for twenty years. I want an old woman to suddenly remember her childhood. I want two strangers to argue about what an image means. I want someone having a terrible day to encounter something beautiful.

Put art in books. Print it on posters and postcards. Paint it on buildings. Put it in streets and schools and homes.

If an original painting can belong to only one person, let the image belong to a thousand.

A reproduction does not diminish the original. A postcard does not cheapen a painting. A poster on the wall of someone who could never afford the original does not make the work less valuable. It means that beauty has travelled beyond the people who can afford to own it.

I want art in the home of the person counting their last coins just as much as I want it hanging in a museum.

Beauty should not be a privilege.

Imagination should not belong to the wealthy.

Art becomes poorer, not richer, when access to it becomes a mark of status.

I hate boxes. I refuse to reduce myself to one expression simply because it makes me easier to categorize, market and sell.

Painter. Musician. Filmmaker.

Choose one. Stay there. Repeat yourself. Build your brand.

No - I am not a brand.

I will use whatever language I need.

A painting. A film. A melody. A story.

To me, they are simply different colours on the same palette. I choose the one that can say what I need to say.

The old masters did not obediently remain inside one discipline. Art was not simply a profession to specialize in. It was a way of investigating what it meant to be alive.

I want freedom.

I would rather be called unfocused than become creatively obedient.

Because art, to me, is the human soul trying to get outside the human body.

I want it in museums and kitchens, galleries and streets, books and bedrooms. I want it to reach the child, the intellectual, the fisherman, the cleaner, the millionaire and the person counting their last coins.

Art does not belong to the art world.

Art belongs to everyone.

And if being an artist today means fitting neatly into one category, entering the right galleries, following the right trends, knowing the right people and waiting for the right gatekeepers to decide that what I make deserves to be called art—

then keep the title.

I am not an artist.