Conversational Art History

How to talk about art

Lets be honest theres an elephant in the room when it comes to talking about art and it feels exactly like the gallery attendant who glares at you when step to close to a painting or shoots you evils when you dare take your children into a white space.

For me, art IS for everyone, especially kids but the spaces they occupy and the people who usually fill those spaces can think and act like the opposite. Close your eyes and envision a person that signify these spaces and I bet they are not bright and happy. They often are stiff, a little bit angry and definitely know it all. I am pulling at the generalisation here but I found this to be true more so when I had my eldest son and started to take him to my favourite galleries from a young age.

Who decided galleries were to be completely silent? Whats with that. Yes we should teach out children the significance of respect not just for people but for arts and the correct way to behave in certain environments but over everything I want kids to be kids.

Anyway thats not the point of this. With art, I always take the conversational approach.

I was always told I couldn’t. Was never told I was smart. I was always ‘good at art’ but what did that mean. I come from a very humble working class background where the company I kept was not talking about art with the dialect heard in galleries. Also being Scottish and having a slang Glaswegian accent, people have openly assumed I’m uneducated. In actual fact I have a Masters degree and can hold my own in a conversation about art but even with my knowledge those spaces are more often than not, painful and I understand how people find them numbing.

Art is so interesting and endless and inspiring and I wish more kids and people in general felt that this space was more welcoming.

I found a book in an op shop last week titled ‘Bluff your way in ART’ and it reminded me of a book I pitched to a publisher when I started writing my first book (Art Class with Bobby: Line and Colour). My big life goal was to rewrite art history to make it more accessible and call it Conversational Art History.

A Psychic once told me that a book I was going to write would end up being taught in school (lol no pressure) and maybe this is it. But lets be honest. I’ve just had a baby, so maybe I’ll start here.

So if you want to learn a bit more about art in a conversational way. Watch this space.